Travel Guide Cempoala - Zempoala

44 kilometers north of Veracruz, near the beach of Chachalacas, you will find the ruins of Zempoala (or Cempoala). This name means in Nahuatl "Twenty" or "Place of the Twenty", probably because every 20 days commercial activities were carried out here, in this city which was going to count up to 20 000 inhabitants. This was the first site that the Spaniards discovered after their arrival in the New World. Although there are traces of the ancient Olmec culture that developed in the area before the first millennium, its most important architectural activity took place between the beginning of the tenth century and the arrival of the Spaniards