Cempoala

When the Spanish landed in 1519, the largest city they met on this coast was Cempoala, a Totonac capital of perhaps twenty or thirty thousand people whose ruler - remembered in the chronicles as the fat cacique - made an alliance with Cortes against the Aztecs, supplying warriors and porters for the march inland. Spanish accounts describe walls so brightly plastered and polished that scouts thought they were silver. What survives is a compact ceremonial centre: temple platforms and pyramids arranged around plazas, several enclosed by distinctive low circular or semicircular walls of river cobbles, along with a "chimneys" structure of round columns and the temple where Cortes is said to have had the idols thrown down. The rounded river-stone masonry is unlike anything in the highlands and gives the ruins their character. A small museum covers Totonac culture and the alliance's consequences, and the site sits a few kilometres from the coast where the whole entangled story began.

History

The name means "place of twenty waters" in Nahuatl, perhaps after the channels that fed its gardens and fields. Some sources say the city was founded at least 1,500 years before the Spanish arrived; the Totonacs moved onto this coastal plain around 1000-1150, and it was the first city the Spaniards saw on the mainland of North America (Wikipedia, Cempoala).

What you'll find

• The ring walls - circular cobble enclosures around temples.
• The main pyramid - the plaza's principal platform.
• The chimneys structure - the round-columned building.
• The river-stone masonry - smooth cobbles as facing.

When to go

November to April for cooler, drier days; mornings before the coastal heat builds. The site is small and rarely crowded.

Practical notes

Structures are mid-sized and lightly interpreted - a guide or prior reading adds a great deal. Shade is scarce. The modern town presses close to the ruins.

Nearby

Quiahuiztlan's clifftop tombs and Villa Rica beach lie north; La Antigua and Veracruz port are south.

Key facts