CHAN CHAN, the largest mud city in the world

 

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Chan Chant is a pre-Columbian city built entirely of mud (adobe) on the northern coast of Peru just 5 km from the city of Trujillo. This large city is made up of streets and avenues that are perfectly outlined and well planned. Its sumptuous palaces of the Chimu nobility, ceremonial water wells, workers' quarters, warehouses for storing food, seeds and various products that would later be used by the local population also stand out.

 This ancien city was the capital of one of the most powerful empires of ancient Peru called CHIMU, which after many conquests came to occupy the entire northern coast of Peru from Tumbes on the border with Ecuador to the north of Lima. This entire territory had an extensive network of roads that connected Chan Chan with all the administrative and ceremonial centers of this great and extensive empire.

 There is a legend that says that the Chimus are the descendants of that mythical character called TAYCANAMO who one day arrived from some unknown place on a raft and landed on the beach of Huanchaco and was well received by the local people and thanks to his leadership and wisdom they elected him as their emperor and from there a new dynasty was born whose lineage would last until the arrival of the Incas.

 

 CHAN CHAN is considered the largest adobe city in the Americas and the second largest in the world, reaching 20 square kilometers in area and with a population of between 40,000 and 60,000. In its heyday, it was undoubtedly a city as large and populated as Rome or Paris. It was made up of 10 large enclosures or palaces, which in turn were like small citadels that served as the residence of an emperor. This means that Chan Chan was occupied by 10 rulers successively until the arrival of the Incas in 1470. This army, coming from the south (Cusco), was led by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui.

 

 

Chan Chan was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988. This pre-Columbian city is the best expression of planned urbanism before the arrival of the Spanish, where the high level of development achieved by the Chimu is evident, not only in architecture but also in agriculture, having built large irrigation canals to gain large extensions of new farmland from the coastal desert. They also stood out in goldsmithing, being expert goldsmiths who inherited from their ancestors the Mochicas their advanced techniques for melting and molding precious metals.

 The Chimus believed themselves to be descendants of the Moon, which they worshipped, and built Chan Chana a few meters from the sea. It seems that it was erected as if it were a monument or a poem dedicated to the sea, where its walls, plazas and temples have high relief friezes in the form of fishing nets, sea birds, fish, sea currents, that is, everything linked to the sea, which, as is known, has a close relationship with the Moon, their main God.