Visit Teotihuacan, the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon

If you are traveling to Mexico City, don’t not forget to visit Teotihuacan, one of the most important archaeological sites in Mexico. We will tell you here how to go and what can you see.

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Information to Visit the Pyramids of Teotihuacan

How much is it?
80 pesos (updated 2022)

Which are the schedules?
From 9:00 AM till 4:00 PM

Can you take photos?
Yes. Only to take video you have to pay an extra fee of 50 pesos (updated 2022).

The archaeological zone of Teotihuacán has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

How to get to the archaeological zone of Teotihuacan?

From Mexico City, we headed to the Terminal de Autobuses Norte (North Bus Terminal). Once there, we looked for the post called “Transportes Pirámides”, from there the buses leave us at the door of the archaeological site.

Another way to get there is through a tour, they pick you up at a point in CDMX and take you to the site to bring you back.

Visiting the archaeological zone

The name of Teotihuacan comes from Nahuatl and means “Place where men become gods”, it was called that way by the Mexicas when they discovered this great abandoned city. To this day, it is unknown who its original inhabitants were.

Arriving

The place has several doors, we entered through door 1. We arrived quite early (although it was hard to get up 🙂 ) since a friend who had gone before us told us that if we went later it would be full of people. The other advice we read was that you had to go during the weekdays, less people. Since this was the first archeological site I had ever visited, I didn’t know what to expect. In the end we managed to get there early, but not that much, we went during the week but there are still people. And if there are no weekend people, during the week there are the schools visits.

To put it in a nutshell: to visit Teotihuacan it is better to do it on the weekdays and early.

So in the end as soon as we arrived we saw a “red wave” of students coming right behind us.

Anyway I have to say that the site is so big that even though there were so many students, it was not a big inconvenience.

A curious point of the visit: when we arrived and started the tour, many vendors approached us offering us products at very cheap prices. For example, a figure in the shape of masks for, I don’t remember how much, very cheap and since we didn’t want to carry things, we said no thanks. There were LOTS of vendors so we had to say no gracias many times.

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When we finished the visit, we said “well now let’s buy something”. Only now the vendors were no longer coming. Now it was the people who approached them and consequently the prices were different, really different… more than double, nonsense, total we didn’t buy anything. So the advice when visiting Teotihuacán is: buy when offered and early.

Temple of Quetzalcoatl and Citadel

This is the first construction we saw when entering through gate 1. This was the administrative center of the city. A good rehearsal to practice climbing stairs, it is not very big so with this we are preparing for the pyramids to come.

Calzada de los Muertos (Roadway of the Dead)

This causeway runs from the Citadel to the Pyramid of the Moon. It measures approximately 2 km.

Site Museum

The site museum is located near gate 5, it would have been better to see it before starting the whole visit, but oh well… Inside the museum we could see several figures of all sizes, vessels, etc. All salvaged from the site itself. They also have a model that gives us a more precise idea of the greatness of this city.

Pyramid of the Sun

This pyramid is one of the largest in Mesoamerica, behind the Pyramid of Cholula (es). It has a height of 63 meters and oh how it hurts to climb it. Of course, the view from the top is very beautiful and we are left with that feeling of we did it!

Pyramid of the Moon

At this point our legs were hurting a lot, but we also had to climb the pyramid of the Moon (even if we couldn’t reach the top) since the legend said that “if you climb the pyramid of the sun and not the one of the moon, it gets very jealous”. So in order not to make her angry, here we go, everything already hurt us, anyway it couldn’t be worse.

Palacios al costado de la Pirámide de Palaces next to the Pyramid of the Moon

Going down the Pyramid of the Moon we have on the right side the Palaces of Quetzalpapalotl, of the Jaguars and of the Feathered Snails. In those we could see some murals, for example in the one of the jaguars there were still these animals drawn on the wall with yellow and red colors. We also saw sculpted stones like the one below, which seems to represent a bird. In these buildings lived the priests who officiated right next door (in the temples).

There are no longer any priests in these places, only visitors who seek to escape a bit from the sun, which at that time is already very strong.

Bidding farewell to Teotihuacan

We left the premises and before going to look for the bus to return to Mexico City, we took a walk around the souvenir stalls, bought a few things and from there we returned. And this was my first visit to an archaeological site in Mexico. At last.

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