Palace with "mosaics" and original paint

The famous wall mosaics

Grupo de las Columnas

The Spanish church built on top of Mixtec/Zapotec ruins

Mitla is the name commonly given to an archaeological site located in the town of San Pablo Villa de Mitla in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is famous for its pre-Columbian Mesoamerican buildings. This article is about a decorative art. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Mitla Pass is a 32 km-long snaky pass in the Sinai wedged between mountain ranges to the north and south. ... The United Mexican States (Estados Unidos Mexicanos or Mexico) comprises 31 states (estados) and one federal district (Distrito Federal), which contains the capital, Mexico City. ... Catedral de Santo Domingo The Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca or simply Oaxaca   is one of the 31 states of Mexico, located in the southern part of Mexico, west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. ... The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents. ... This article is about the culture area. ...

Pre-Columbian Mitla

While archaeological evidence shows that Mitla was occupied by 500 BC, the earliest construction dates to only about 200 AD. Construction of pre-Columbian style buildings continued up until the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the 1520s. The town has been continually occupied ever since; part of the more recent town was built over pre-Hispanic Mitla, but some groups of old elite palace complexes remained. At its height Mitla had a population of approximately 10,000 people. Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... A Conquistador (Spanish: []) (English: Conqueror) was a Spanish soldier, explorer and adventurer who took part in the gradual invasion and conquering of much of the Americas and Asia Pacific, bringing them under Spanish colonial rule between the 15th and 19th centuries. ... ...

The earliest structures (i.e., the Late Formative and Early Classic periods) at Mitla are Zapotec; the remainder are Postclassic in date, constructed during the Mixtec occupation of the site, but often displaying an interesting mix of Zapotec and Mixtec styles. Five main groups of buildings remain including the Grupo de las Columnas in the east of the site which is a former palace. It consists of three large rooms set around tombs and a courtyard. The palace walls are decorated with distinctive geometric mosaics that characterize Mitla's buildings. Each frieze consists of up to 100,000 separate pieces of cut stone. One of the rooms, known as the Salon de las Columnas, houses six monolithic pillars that once supported the roof. To the north is the Grupo de Iglesia centred around the colonial Catholic church. The pre-Columbian buildings that survived its construction are of similar design to those in the Grupo de las Columnas, but on a smaller scale. They still retain traces of paintwork and some artifacts which have been found at the site are displayed in the Museo Frisell de Arte Zapeteco Mitla in the centre of the town which cloded temporarily for renovation in 2001. Mesoamerican chronology The chronology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica is usually divided into the following eras: Paleo-Indian Period c. ... Mesoamerican chronology The chronology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica is usually divided into the following eras: Paleo-Indian Period c. ... Extent of the Zapotec civilization The Zapotec civilization was an indigenous pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca of southern Mesoamerica. ... Mesoamerican chronology The chronology of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica is usually divided into the following eras: Paleo-Indian Period c. ... Jade mask found in Tomb 7, Monte Alban, c. ... Buildings are combinatorial structures on which groups act; the theory of buildings was introduced by Jacques Tits and expounded in Kenneth S. Browns excellent monograph Buildings. ... The quintessential medieval European palace: Palais de la Cité, in Paris, the royal palace of France. ... A tomb is a small building (or vault) for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. ... A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. ... The quintessential medieval European palace: Palais de la Cité, in Paris, the royal palace of France. ... Look up walls, wall in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Geometry (from the Greek words Ge = earth and metro = measure) is the branch of mathematics first introduced by Theaetetus dealing with spatial relationships. ... This article is about a decorative art. ... Frieze of the Tower of the Winds. ... Something that is monolithic is something created in one piece, resembling a monolith such as an obelisk. ... For other uses, see Column (disambiguation). ... For automobile roofs, see Sunroof. ... In general, the word colonial means of or relating to a colony. In United States history, the term Colonial is used to refer to the period before US independence. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ...

In 1494 the Aztecs conquered Mitla and sacked the city. Once the Spanish took over, they found their efforts to convert locals to Catholicism thwarted by competition from native beliefs, manifesting themselves at ancient buildings such as those at Mitla. To combat the problem, the Spanish built a new church on top of the footprint of a former temple , scavenging the original temple for building materials. 1494 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Aztec is a term used to refer to certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who achieved political and military dominance over large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the Late post-Classic... As a Christian ecclesiastical term, Catholic—from the Greek adjective , meaning general or universal[1]—is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as follows: ~Church, (originally) whole body of Christians; ~, belonging to or in accord with (a) this, (b) the church before separation into Greek or Eastern and Latin or...

A number of Spanish writers of the colonial era remark on the well built pre-Hispanic buildings here. Alexander von Humboldt published a description of the site in 1810. Some excavations and repair of buildings was done under the direction of Leopoldo Batres in 1901. The Mexican government made further excavations of the site in the mid 1930s and the early 1960s. An 1859 portrait of Alexander von Humboldt by the artist Julius Schrader, showing Mount Chimborazo in the background. ... 1810 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Year 1901 (MCMI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday [1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... The 1930s were described as an abrupt shift to more radical and conservative lifestyles, as countries were struggling to find a solution to the Great Depression, also known as the [[. In East Asia, the rise of militarism occurred. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969. ...

Present day Mitla

The official name of the present-day town is San Pablo Villa de Mitla. With a population of just over 7,000 people in 1990, Mitla is located about 45 km (some 26 miles) by road southeast of the state capital of Oaxaca, Oaxaca. The main group of pre-Hispanic buildings is at the north end of town. Today, the town of Mitla is a popular tourism destination for visitors to Oaxaca and has a small museum and hosts a large outdoor market. Most of the townspeople speak a variant of the Zapotec language ( ISO 639.-3[1] code zaw.). Year 1990 (MCMXC) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar). ... The city of Oaxaca (formally: Oaxaca de Juárez, in honor of 19th-century president and national hero Benito Juárez, who was born nearby) is the capital and largest city of the Mexican state of the same name. ... Tourist redirects here. ... The Palais du Louvre in Paris, which houses the Musée du Louvre, one of the worlds most famous museums, and most certainly the largest. ... A marketplace is the space, actual or metaphorical, in which a market operates. ... Zapotec refers to a native people of Mexico, their language family consisting of more than fifteen languages, and their historic culture and traditions. ... “ISO” redirects here. ...

In Mitla and the surrounding towns are "palenques", small producers of mezcal where they produce the drink by hand from the heart of the agave plant. 5 km from Mitla is a small town called Matatlán, which, due to the number of palenques, is called the "mezcal capital of the world".^[1] A cheap commercial bottle of Mexican Mezcal bought in Cancun. ...

Additional Images

Walls with the distinct "mosaics"	Detail of interior "mosaic" reveals original stucco Stucco is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water which is applied wet, and hardens when it dries. ...	Another palace within Mitla	Grupo de Iglesia Church
Grupo de la Iglesia Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...	Patio Norte Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...

References

1. ^ Quintanar Hinojosa, Beatriz (August 2007). "[www.mexicodesconocido.com.mx Ciudad de Oaxaca]". Guía México Desconocido: Oaxaca 137. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Mitla

• Mitla virtual tour on geocities.com
• The Grecas of Mitla story and photos on ourmexico.com
• The DeLanges visit Mitla, with lots of photos

Coordinates: 16°55′N, 96°24′W Image File history File links Commons-logo. ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...