Huaca de la Luna

8.1035°S, 79.0413°W.

The Huaca de la Luna — the Pyramid of the Moon — at the Moche capital of Cerro Blanco in the Moche Valley, La Libertad, Peru, opposite the Huaca del Sol across the urban core of the ancient city. Construction was carried out in six successive phases between approximately 100 and 800 CE. Original base 290 by 210 metres; original height 32 metres on five superimposed temples, each phase building over and burying the previous structure. Excavated since 1991 by Santiago Uceda and Ricardo Morales for the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo. The interior preserves the most extensive surviving Moche polychrome mural programme: walls painted in reds, yellows, blues, and whites depicting the Decapitator god, ceremonial human-sacrifice scenes, anthropomorphic spider deities, and the geometric step-fret iconography characteristic of Moche art. Excavations have recovered the remains of more than 70 sacrificial victims interred in dedicatory deposits beneath the building.

A pyramid whose interior preserves the most complete polychrome mural programme of any pre-Inca culture, with seventy sacrificed bodies under its foundations.