Cempoala

Cempoala, also written Zempoala, is the archaeological site of the old Totonac capital, on the flat coastal plain about 40 km north of the port of Veracruz. It lies on the edge of the present-day town of Zempoala (9,668 people at the 2020 census) in the municipality of Úrsulo Galván, about 1 km from the río Actopan and 6 km from the Gulf. The Nahuatl name is usually translated as "twenty waters", perhaps for the canals and aqueducts that watered its gardens and fields. The site is managed by INAH.

The Totonacs settled here around the time of the Toltec empire, roughly AD 1000–1150, and by the Late Postclassic Cempoala was the largest city on the Gulf coast, with perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 people. In the mid-15th century the armies of Moctezuma I subdued it, and it became the place where the Mexica collected tribute from the coast. In 1519 Hernán Cortés marched here from his camp opposite San Juan de Ulúa; it was the first city the Spanish saw on the mainland. Its ruler Xicomecóatl, whom the Spanish called the "Fat Cacique", received them and complained bitterly about the Mexica, and the alliance sealed soon after at Quiahuiztlan sent thousands of Totonac warriors and porters with Cortés to Tenochtitlan. On 27 May 1520 Cortés defeated the forces of Pánfilo de Narváez here. Epidemics then emptied the city; after the smallpox outbreak of 1575–1577 the few survivors were moved to Xalapa. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso rediscovered the ruins in 1890, and José García Payón excavated them in the 1940s.

The city was built of river stones set in mortar and coated with lime made from burnt shells, which made the buildings shine in the sun. Inside the walled ceremonial centre stand the Great Pyramid or Temple of the Sun, the Templo Mayor with battlements on top, the Temple of the Chimneys with its half-round pillars, the round temple of the wind god Ehécatl, and El Pimiento, decorated with stone skulls. Las Caritas, about 200 m east, took its name from the hundreds of small stucco faces that once covered it. In the main plaza are three rings of stepped stone pillars, with 13, 28 and 40 pillars, which researchers think priests used to count time and track eclipses. Many more mounds lie unexcavated among the houses of the town. A small site museum, opened in the 1970s and renovated in 2001, shows figurines, stone yokes and axes, mural fragments and grinding stones from the excavations; it is included in the ticket. Visitors come in large numbers at the spring equinox.