Rising above a gold, grassy plain to the northeast of Mexico City are the ruins of the first true metropolis in the Western Hemisphere. It outlived its contemporary, imperial Rome, and was the greatest city in the Americas until the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan nearly 700 years later. The Aztec elite made frequent pilgrimages to the ruins of Teotihuacan and gave the city its name.

Scholars today know very little about the people who constructed this magnificent city, or why they abandoned it just a few centuries after it reached its Golden Age, roughly AD 200 to 500. Theories include overpopulation, rampant disease, internal power struggles, and rebellion of the masses. Systematic burning of ceremonial buildings points to the purposeful destruction of the city.

Today, many of the ceremonial buildings lining Avenue of the Dead have been partially reconstructed, although without their colourful stucco facades.