Tepeticpac

Tepeticpac is the archaeological site that crowns the hills of Cuauhtzi, El Fuerte and Tlaxistlan above the village of Santiago Tepeticpac, in the municipality of Totolac, about five kilometres north of Tlaxcala city. The Nahuatl name means roughly "on top of the hill", and that is exactly where it sits: on summits and slopes between 2,340 and 2,560 metres, with gradients close to 70 degrees and ravines 200 to 300 metres deep. The protected area set by INAH covers about 98 hectares.

Tlaxcalan tradition counted it as the oldest of the four lordships of Tlaxcallan, alongside Ocotelulco, Tizatlán and Quiahuiztlán. The chronicler Diego Muñoz Camargo says it was founded by Culhuatecuhtli Quanez, leader of a Teochichimec group that reached the valley following its god Camaxtli, and that his younger brother Teyohualminqui later settled Ocotelulco. Archaeology shows a small first occupation in the Epiclassic (AD 600-900) and the large hilltop town between the 12th and 16th centuries. Around 1519 its lord was Tlahuexolotzin, later baptised Don Gonzalo, and its war emblem was a wolf with a golden head and green feathers, painted in the Lienzo de Tlaxcala.

What survives is a town built for defence: walls, ditches, narrow entrances and watchtowers up to seven metres tall. A 2015 survey counted more than 150 terraces, 13 buildings and six plazas spread across five sectors, and north of El Fuerte runs the Gran Zanja, a trench over 350 metres long. On a pre-Hispanic platform on El Fuerte stood one of the region's first Christian chapels, in use from about 1533 until a windstorm brought it down in 1552; its remains were restored in 2015.

INAH's Tepeticpac Archaeological Project has worked here since 2010. A widened access road opened in July 2024, and in July 2026 INAH reported the Tepeticpac Museum beside the road as more than half built, with a palaeontology room that will show a gomphothere skull found at the site. Mountain bikers and hikers come up every weekend.