Mitla, the place of the dead

The Zapotec place of the dead, walled in mosaic, sacked in 1553

In Nahuatl it was Mictlán, the place of the dead, and in Zapotec Lyobaa, the place of rest: a sacred burial ground in the Tlacolula Valley of Oaxaca that became the chief religious centre of the Zapotec, where their high priest, the Uija-tào, still lived when the Spanish arrived in the 1520s. Nothing else in Mexico looks like it. Its tombs, panels, friezes and entire walls are covered in geometric mosaic fretwork made of small, finely cut and polished stones fitted together without mortar, work that shows the influence of the Mixtec, who became prominent in the valley at Mitla’s peak. The first friar to write about it, Toribio de Benavente Motolinía, said its name meant hell. In 1553 the archbishop of Oaxaca ordered the site destroyed to break its power over the valley: the buildings were dismantled and sacked, Spanish clergy moved into its rooms, and its stones went into Spanish churches, among them the Church of San Pablo, built on top of part of the ruins. The north side of Oaxaca Cathedral borrows Mitla’s designs, to show the old order replaced by the new.