It is difficult to see it from the modest vantage point rising a few yards above the walls of the city that was the capital of the kingdom of Chimor. The buildings and their adjacent spaces cover nearly five thousand acres, fifteen hundred of which make up the nucleus of the monument which archaeologists have divided into twelve "citadels" or architectural complexes.

It is not a striking view at first because the absence of roofs and the absence of roofs and the faded color of the buildings conceal their past beauty. Upon the adobe walls of the city, its builders applied a first layer of mud and sand which they covered with another, much finer layer, sieved through cloth before being applied and then finished with a substance that made it shine or pigments that made Chan Chan a city of colors.

Another characteristic which can still be seen at close quarters is the excellence of the relieves covering entire walls of the monument complex. The motifs may have been molded when the walls were built, or perhaps the figures were added later in predetermined locations, removing part of the plaster to create the desired effect. The result is that several of the citadels still have walls that appear to have been woven, with applications and embroidery as if textile techniques had been reproduced in mud.

Witout too much imagination, the most common colors are: yellow, ochre and black, and the many marine and winged beings sculpted and still visible on its walls, cause us to share the admiration that Chan Chan provoked in its heyday, around 1450, a little before the Chimor kingdom feel to the Incas.

Its growth was not sudden; the first of the "citadels" was built around 800 A.D. but al its zenith the capital had 26,000 artisans and 3,000 servants who waited upon a gilded elite whose clothing and jewelry (also found at other archaeological sites) are proof of an interesting ceremonial life.

Chimor o Chimu was the coastal counterpart to the development of the Incas of Cusco. The synthesis and culmination of the small kingdoms or confederations existing on the desert coast of the Pacific Ocean. This area is astonishingly dry and this made its oases into centers of population that continually struggled to expand their territorial limits, seeking to capture other oasis to extend the fishing grounds they controlled. From 200 A.D to 700 A.D. the societies of the northern coast shared cultural characteristics grouped under the denomination Moche or Moochica, and the kingdom of Chimor was the direct descendent. Its unification and later expansion began in the year 1100 when a catastrophic El Niño phenomenon destroyed the system of agriculture upon which the first inhabitants of Chan Chan depended.

As we know, from time to time and interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean takes place and has an impact across the globe, but on the northern coast of Peru is characterized by rain and flooding which changes the landscape and life of the coastal deserts.

The El Niño a that time must have destroyed the network of canals to the north of Chan Chan, on which its habitant depended and this changed the orientation of their subsistence economy towards military expansion and, in 1350, the conquest of Lambayeque and, perhaps, alliances with the local lords of Cajamarca, thus becoming a state to rival the centers of power in the Peruvian highlands. Towards 1470, the Incas decided to expand their empire to the north and, advancing through the Andes, their first encounter was with the people of Cajamarca, in which their coastal allies would also have taken part. But the goal was Chan Chan and chroniclers relate how they laid siege to the city until the lack of water and food cause it to capitulate. Immediately afterwards, the Chimu kingdom broke up into several Inca provinces and the governing family had to agree to one of its children being reeducated in Cusco, to ensure loyalty to the new government.

Among the many differences between the cultures of the Incas and Chimu was the way in which they used space. Whilst Cusco was a great ceremonial center, Chan Chan was a city. Much closer to the western perception of the "small towns" of the Mochica, different from the Incas who saw their capital rather as a sacred space par excellence.

Neither was there any similarity between the northern languages of Muchik and Quingnam and the Runa Simi or Quechua of the Incas. The "general language of Peru" (Quechua in general words) provides us with a number of dictionaries and grammars, whilst only a few vocabularies and a grammar exist to tell us of the northern languages, the grammar was written by Father De La Carrera who, driven to desperation by its complicated phonetics, decided to invent letters that did not exist in Spanish to give an idea of the pronunciation, but it is now almost impossible to decipher his work. In Chan Chan people spoke Quingnam, which feel into disuse shortly after the conquest by Cusco and then disappeared because of the proximity of Trujillo, one of the most important Spanish cities in viceregal Peru. Muchik or Mochica survived into 20th Century where the last families to speak lived in Eten (Lambayeque). Neither did the religious ideology of the two civilizations have much in common, whilst the sun, lighting and Viracocha (supposedly the god of creation) were the supreme deities of the Incas and the moon was only the wife of the sun; the sea (Nin) and the moon (Rem) were powerful in the mythology of the descents of the Mochica, and although he sun (Siam) was worshiped in the north it did not occupy such an important place as in the highland cultures.

It is easy get to Chan Chan, barely two and a half miles from the center of the modern city of Trujillo, founded by Diego de Almagro in 1534 and named after the birthplace of Francisco Pizarro, Almagro's leader and later rival. A small on-site museum gives you the first idea of the vastness of the spaces, streets, walls, houses and monuments that make up the largest mud-brick city in the world. A glance at the ceramics and the iconography preserved in its walls remains you of the marine life, artifacts and even the faces of its inhabitants.

Chan Chan is returning to life today through its visitors and the proximity of new settlements arising dangerously close to the monument.

Happily the idea of taking responsibility for the care of its ancient walls is becoming more generalized. They are the looking glass of our ancestors whose works demand respect and care.