The huge mud city of Chan Chan
Chan Chan is a pre-Columbian adobe city, located on the north coast of Peru, a few kilometers from the city of Trujillo. It is made up of approximately nine walled citadels that, together, were the capital of the Chimor kingdom, a state organization of the Chimú culture. It is the largest city built in adobe in America and one of the largest in the world built in this material.
The so-called "City of the Sun", original meaning of Chan Chan, was founded in the year 850 AD. Its social and cultural splendor flourished long before the Incas became the most important power on the continent, reaching the height of its glory between the 14th and 15th centuries. The archaeological site that makes up the city of Chan Chan has an approximate size of about 20 square kilometers, and became the largest urban center in South America.
The Chimú were great masters of textiles, ceramics, metallurgy and goldsmithing, but above all their architectural work is known. It has great beauty and variety in the number of walls decorated with high reliefs. The courtyards, audiences, and corridors inside the citadels were richly decorated with geometric friezes depicting mammals, birds, fish, and mythical creatures.
The enormous city of Chan Chan constitutes an exceptional testimony of the urban planning of pre-Columbian America, being one of the most outstanding wonders of the Andean country.
Ruins of the Chan Chan citadel in Trujillo, Peru.
The urban distribution mode of Chan Chan reflects that there was a strong stratification, with different social classes occupying different areas and buildings specific to their economic condition. Each citadel was protected by high walls, inside which a succession of royal complexes rose, and was made up of a set of corridors that connected warehouses, pools, residences, ceremonial patios or funerary platforms.
Next to the royal citadels there were complexes of smaller dimensions, where nobles and bureaucrats related to the administration of the State lived. On the periphery were the neighborhoods of artisans and peasants, as well as the orchards and crops that supplied the city. In addition, in order to supply the needs of such a complex urban framework, they built an immense network of canals to bring water from the streams to an arid land with little rainfall.
But its successful culture was mortally wounded by the arrival of the Incas in the last third of the fifteenth century. The Inca troops would arrive, confront and subdue Chan Chan, causing its decline and subsequent abandonment. When the Spanish conquerors arrived, they would loot everything in their path, entering into a dynamic of destruction and abandonment until, in the middle of the 19th century, its mythical greatness would attract archaeologists interested in unveiling and recovering its remains.
Thanks to his incessant work, which continues to this day, it has been known, for example, that at its best the city came to house between 60,000 and 100,000 people. Another great work has been the constant architectural recovery, which has been revealing its importance, wealth and social organization, which has been able to give us an x-ray of its way of life and has allowed its remains to remain as a great human legacy of Peru. So much so, that since 1986 the place was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
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