It is huge -- probably held 150,000 people or more at times during its height between 100 B.C. and its collapse in about 750 A.D. While nowhere near the size of its contemporary, ancient Rome (which topped out at 1 million in the same period), that is impressive at any time of history.
What you see here, the "Street of the Dead," was probably just the ceremonial center of town; most of the areas where people lived haven't been excavated yet and/or aren't open to the public.
As at the other sites we've seen, buildings were decorated in beautifully painted stucco, some of which has survived:
The two most famous monuments here are the "Pyramid of the Moon" and the "Pyramid of the Sun." Those names were given them by the Aztecs, who rediscovered the site 700 years after it had been abandoned and, naturally, though their gods had founded it. No one knows who or what the pyramids were actually intended for, although speculation centers on water and fertility gods.
The Moon pyramid is the smaller of the two (although still big: the picture above was taken from halfway up it):
But it is the Sun Pyramid that justly commands all the attention. Larger than all but one of the Egyptian pyramids, it literally towers over its valley:
One way to appreciate the scale is to zoom in on the people who have climbed it:
We climbed it ourselves -- it's about the same height as climbing the tower of one of the great cathedrals of Europe. But at 7,500 feet of elevation, that's no mean feat; you have to pause and catch your breath a few times on the way up.
But the view (here, looking down on the Moon Pyramid) is well worth it:
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