Great Basement/Palace

19.2472°N, 98.3375°W.

The Great Basement/Palace at Cacaxtla in the central Mexican state of Tlaxcala is an Epiclassic palatial-pyramidal complex built between approximately 650 and 900 CE during the period after Teotihuacan's collapse. The complex covers more than 200 metres of artificially terraced hilltop, of adobe and stone construction with extensive interior chambers. Cacaxtla is renowned for its preserved polychrome murals — the Battle Mural depicts a graphic combat between jaguar warriors and bird warriors, painted in vivid blue, red, and yellow pigments and exhibiting a stylistic fusion of Maya and central-Mexican traditions unique in Mesoamerica. The murals were rediscovered in 1975 by looters and rescued by an INAH project under Diana López de Molina. The palette includes Maya blue, the chemically stable indigo-clay pigment otherwise concentrated in the Maya lowlands.

The Great Basement/Palace is a building whose interior walls were painted by people who had clearly seen Maya murals from a thousand kilometres away.