Tula, Hidalgo

Distinctive Toltec features here include terraced pyramids, colonnaded buildings, and relief sculptures, including the characteristic chacmools, reclining figures that may have been avatars of the rain god, Tlaloc. There are two large courts for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. Some of the architecture is similar to that at Chichen Itza.

The site was extensively looted in Aztec times, with much of the artwork and sculpture carted off.

The first scholarly description of the ruins was made by Antonio García Cubas of the Mexican Society of Geography and History in 1873. The first archaeological excavations were conducted in the 1880s by French antiquarian Désiré Charnay. A twenty year archaeological project under Jorge Acosta of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) began in 1940. In the 1970s further excavations and restorations of some structures were conducted by INAH and the University of Missouri–Columbia.

Parts of the site are open for tourist visits, and Tula has a small museum.