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The modern city of TULA DE ALLENDE lies on the edge of the Valley of México, 85km north of Mexico City. A pleasant enough regional centre it's worth taking a few minutes to look over the impressive, fortress-like Franciscan monastery and church (built around 1550), but most likely you'll want to grab a meal and move on, most notably to the wonderful pre-Hispanic pyramid site of Tula , 2km north of the centre on a small hill.

In legend at least, the mantle of Teotihuacán fell on Tollan, or Tula, as the next great power to dominate Mexico. History, legend and archeological evidence, however, are here almost impossible to disentangle and often flatly contradictory. The Aztecs regarded their city as the descendant of Tula and hence embellished its reputation - the streets, they said, had been paved with gold and the buildings constructed from precious metals and stones; the Toltecs, who founded Tula, were the inventors of every science and art. In reality it seems unlikely that this was ever as large or as powerful a city as Teotihuacán had been - or as Tenochtitlán was to become - and its period of dominance (about 950-1150 AD) was relatively short. Yet all sorts of puzzles remain about the Toltec era, and in particular the extent of their influence in the Yucatán - at Chichén Itzá much of the architecture appears to have been influenced by the Toltecs. Few people believe that the Toltecs could actually have had an empire, or an influence, that stretched so far: however warlike (and the artistic evidence is that Tula was a grimly militaristic society, heavily into human sacrifice), they would have lacked the manpower, resources or any logical justification for such expansion. Nevertheless, they were there.

The answer lies, perhaps, in the legends of Quetzalcoatl that surround the city. Adopted from Teotihuacán, the plumed serpent attained far more importance here in Tula, where he is depicted everywhere. Again the facts and legends are almost impossible to extricate, but at some stage Tula certainly had a ruler regarded as Quetzalcoatl who was driven from the city by the machinations of the evil god Texcatlipoca. In legend, Quetzalcoatl fled to the east where he either burnt himself to become the morning star or sailed across the ocean on a raft of snakes, promising one day to return (a prophecy that Cortés turned skilfully to his advantage). What may actually have happened is that the ruler was defeated in factional struggles within Tula and, in exile with his followers, eventually reached Maya territory where they established a new Toltec regime.