Casas Grandes
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How it came to be
Paquimé, or Casas Grandes, is a city of adobe at the foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Chihuahua, northern Mexico. From 1130 small settlements began to gather in its fertile valley, and after a fire around 1340 the town was rebuilt with multi-storey apartment blocks. At its height in the 14th and 15th centuries it had about 2,000 rooms and was a trading hinge between the Pueblo cultures to the north and Mesoamerica to the south.
The town had underground drains, reservoirs and channels carrying water to the houses, along with I-shaped Mesoamerican ballcourts and T-shaped doorways. Its people kept scarlet macaws, imported from Mesoamerica, in pens and used their feathers in ritual. They also made copper bells, beads of marine shell and pottery painted on a white or reddish ground, which travelled far through trade.
When the Spanish explorer Francisco de Ibarra reached the site in 1565, it had already been abandoned. Most of it has still not been excavated. A presidential decree of 1992 made it a protected archaeological zone, and it was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1998.
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