The Largest Adobe City on Earth

Chan Chan: Glories that predate the Inca

Did you know that rising out of the sand a stone’s throw from Peru’s Pacific Ocean coast is the largest adobe city on earth? The Chimú forged one of the largest empires in the history of the Andes and influenced their more famous successors, the Incas.

The Chimú civilization was founded around 850CE by a ruler considered to have been born from a golden egg and arrived from the sea. Water, its abundance and its scarcity, defined the civilization which reached its apogee between the 12th and 15th centuries.

The Chimú were great engineers. They faced the challenge of the coastal desert location by building a sophisticated network of irrigation canals and wells and diverted water through a canal from the Chicama River some 70km away.



The archaeological complex of Chan Chan spreads over 500 acres and includes some ten thousand monumental structures amid a maze of passageways and streets. The vast city was divided into nine citadels delineated by high earthen walls. Within each citadel are dwellings, storehouses, open market spaces, palaces, reservoirs, and funeral platforms and around these nine complexes were a further thirty-two compounds and four production sectors for activities such as weaving, woodworking, and metal working. Walking through the site offers a fascinating glimpse of a very well-organized city.


Chan Chan’s glory days ended around 1470 when the Inca conquered the city, breaking up the Chimú Empire and bringing its craftsmen to Cuzco to continue developing their magnificent art. What was left of the silver and precious metals was later pillaged by the Spanish conquistadors. Today, the site still evokes a sense of the vast riches of this mysterious ancient civilization. Water continues to challenge the site; as the climate changes, increasing rainfall threatens the mud buildings. UNESCO is working hard to set up tents to protect and preserve the site.