Travel Guide Tula

The city of Tula is located in a region known to pre-Hispanic cultures as Teotlalpan, the "Land of the Gods". Tula was the capital of the Toltecs, who established themselves as one of the most powerful civilizations in central Mexico at the turn of the first millennium: activity began there in the 6th century along the Rio Tula, but it was in the 10th century that the modern city emerged, with an orientation and urbanism inspired by cosmic cycles. It succeeded Teotihuacán as an imperialist centre and preceded the great Mexico-Tenochtitlán, to whom it would bequeath the cult of warriors, each order of which corresponded to an animal-totem. The powerful Aztecs went there as a place of worship, haunting the ruins of the city, digging up objects here and there that they then recycled as offerings in their own temples. At its peak (around 1000 AD), its influence extended as far as the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula, Central America, and the Mexican West; to the north, it controlled the region's supply of turquoise from as far away as the southern United States. Its reign as a regional centre ended around 1200; the peoples who would later dominate the region would claim its legacy