Chan Chan

Chan Chan is in Peru, in South America, near the ocean. Long ago it was a very big city.

Its buildings were made of mud bricks dried in the sun.

Chan Chan lies in the valley of the Moche River, near the city of Trujillo on the coast of northern Peru. It was the capital of the Chimú kingdom.

UNESCO says it was the largest city built of earth in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans. The whole city covered about 20 square kilometers, with a grand center of about 6 square kilometers.

UNESCO places Chan Chan in the once fertile valley of the Moche, or Santa Catalina, river, and calls it the largest earthen-architecture city in pre-Columbian America. The remains of the once twenty-square-kilometer city reflect a strict political and social plan, divided into nine 'citadels' or 'palaces' that form independent units.

Its Outstanding Universal Value lies in the extensive, hierarchically planned remains of this huge city, including remnants of the industrial, agricultural and water-management systems that sustained it.

The clay walls have patterns like a net. Some show birds and other animals.

Water came from rivers through a very long ditch called a canal.

The earth walls were often decorated with friezes: raised bands of patterns, animals and human figures. Some walls look like open lattices, full of diamond-shaped holes.

To grow food in this dry land, the Chimú brought water from the Moche and Chicama rivers through a canal about 80 kilometers long. Farm fields and irrigation channels have been found north, east and west of the city.

UNESCO notes that the earthen walls were often decorated with friezes showing abstract motifs and human and animal figures. The Moche and Chicama rivers once fed an intricate irrigation system through a canal about 80 km long, which sustained the region at the height of the Chimú; extensive farmland and irrigation remains lie to the north, east and west.

Because the city is built of earth, heavy rains from El Niño events, salty soil and air, and nearby urban growth threaten it. Chan Chan was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 1986, and conservation work with earthen materials has helped reduce the damage.

In this photo, sandy-colored mud walls have patterns full of holes, like a net. Can you find the bird carved into a wall?

This photo was taken at Chan Chan on 3 June 2023. Low walls of tan clay, full of diamond-shaped holes, run around a sandy courtyard. On a wall in the middle, you can spot a carved bird.

Thin poles standing on square blocks hold up a roof over the walls.

The photograph (3 June 2023, by Draceane) shows a courtyard edged by lattice-pattern adobe walls with rounded tops, a relief of a bird on a central wall panel, and slender poles on square bases supporting a roof.

ICOMOS warned in 1985 that some past restorations, such as the heavy rebuilding of one palace from 1964 to 1969, risked becoming pastiche. UNESCO now notes ongoing maintenance with earthen materials.