Hall of Columns

16.9194°N, 96.3589°W.

The Hall of Columns sits at the heart of the Mitla site in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, the principal religious centre of the Zapotec after Monte Albán's decline and the seat of the high priest known as the Uija-tao. The complex was built primarily between 900 and 1500 CE during the Postclassic, of cut and fitted limestone and andesite without mortar. The exterior walls bear the signature greca panels — geometric stone mosaics of fretwork patterns assembled from up to 100,000 individually cut stone pieces per façade, fitted so precisely that no two adjacent panels repeat the same motif. Six monolithic stone columns inside the principal hall, each cut from a single piece, support the original roof line. The Spanish encountered Mitla in 1521; Bishop Juan de Zumárraga ordered its desecration in the 1530s.

Mitla is a building whose façades were assembled from a hundred thousand stones cut to interlock without a drop of mortar.