Huaca del Sol

8.1319°S, 78.9948°W.

The Huaca del Sol — the Pyramid of the Sun — at the Moche capital of Cerro Blanco in the Moche Valley near modern Trujillo, La Libertad, Peru. Construction was carried out in eight successive phases between approximately 100 and 800 CE. Original base 340 by 160 metres; original height 41 metres on five terraces — making it the largest adobe brick structure ever built in the Americas, comprising an estimated 130 million sun-dried bricks. The pyramid has been catastrophically damaged by Spanish-colonial-era treasure-hunting: in 1602 the Spanish governor of Trujillo diverted the Moche River through the structure to wash the western face away, destroying approximately one-third of the building and exposing the burial chambers for systematic looting. Excavated archaeologically since 1899 and continuously since 1972 under Santiago Uceda and Ricardo Morales.

The largest adobe pyramid in the Americas, built by a culture that produced no writing system but the most photo-realistic ceramic portrait sculpture in pre-Columbian art — and which the Spanish colonial state demolished by river-diversion in a single year.