The city was laid out along the Avenue of the Dead, more than two kilometres long, lined with temples and platforms. The Pyramid of the Sun, one of the largest in the Americas, was built around 200 CE.
Its influence reached far into the Maya lands, and its apartment compounds housed people from across Mesoamerica.
Around 550 CE the city centre was burned, and Teotihuacan declined. Centuries later the Aztecs found its ruins and named it "the place where the gods were created".
