The largest adobe city in the Americas and the second largest in the world: about 20 square kilometres with a dense core of 6, all of it mud brick finished with mud, built by the Chimú as the capital of Chimor and holding 40,000 to 60,000 people from around 900. The Inca took it about 1470. After the Spanish arrived in 1535 and Pizarro founded Trujillo five kilometres away, looters pulled 80,000 pesos of gold out of the burial platforms. UNESCO listed it on 28 November 1986 and it has been on the World Heritage in Danger list continuously ever since, which is not a distinction anywhere wants: adobe and El Niño are a terrible combination, and erosion, flooding, humidity, salt and vandalism are all working on it now. Go while the walls are still standing. La Libertad, Peru.
Trujillo, La Libertad, Peru
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