Paquimé

Paquimé, also called Casas Grandes, was the largest settlement of its kind in northern Mexico and the link between the cultures of Mesoamerica and those of the American southwest. Between roughly the twelfth and fifteenth centuries it grew into a complex of adobe buildings several storeys high, entered through the distinctive T-shaped doorways of the region, with a piped water system, plazas, ballcourts and platform mounds. Most striking are the rows of small adobe pens where scarlet macaws were kept and bred, birds carried up from the tropical lowlands more than a thousand kilometres away for their feathers. The site museum holds the polychrome pottery the culture is known for, still made in the nearby village of Mata Ortiz.

What you actually see

• The adobe complex - multi-storey walls and T-shaped doorways.
• The macaw pens - adobe cages where tropical birds were bred for feathers.
• The water system - channels that carried water into the settlement.
• Mata Ortiz pottery - the revived polychrome tradition in the village nearby.

When to go

October to April is the comfortable season; the desert here is baking in summer and can be cold in midwinter with occasional snow. Mornings give the best light on the adobe. Mata Ortiz workshops are open most days and are worth building into the trip.

Honest expectations

The remains are eroded adobe protected by shelters, and without the museum first they read as low earth walls; this is a site that needs its context to land. It is remote, four hours from the border at Juárez, with little else nearby except Mata Ortiz. Summer heat on the open site is severe.

Nearby

Mata Ortiz and its potters are forty minutes; the Sierra Madre and Copper Canyon are further south.