The Great Pyramid of Tepanapa church - Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remediosa was built on top of an old pyramid that was mistaken as a hill by the Spaniards. The hill terminology has many versions: The Great Pyramid of Tepanapa OR The Great Pyramid of Cholula OR Gran Pirámide de Cholula OR Tlachihualtepetl ("man-made mountain”). An Aztec temple, the largest man-made pyramid in the world, sits buried in earth with a Spanish church set on top. Thanks to the brush and grasses that had overgrown its walls, the largest man-made pyramid in the world had been mistaken for a hill. For an obscure temple no one’s heard of, Cholula holds an impressive array of records: it’s the largest pyramid on the planet, with a base four times larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza and nearly twice the volume. For a long time it remained hidden under the vegetation after 200 years of neglect. The trees had grown, and before the eyes of the conquerors it looked like a mountain, only the locals knew what was truly hidden under the earth. It was not until 1881 that a Swiss archaeologist named Adolph Bandelier, through the Lorillard expedition under the supervision of Désiré Charnay - a photographer and archaeologist of pre-Columbian civilizations in Mexico - studied the hidden settlement created by Mesoamerican civilizations. It was the Great Pyramid of Cholula ("place of escape"), also called Tlachihualtepet ("hill made by hand") that Bandelier discovered. Because the Catholic temple has been declared a historical heritage of the nation, it has not been possible to dig in its entirety. From 1930 to 1950, Ignacio Marquina excavated eight kilometers of tunnels under the pyramid that allowed the observation of the different construction phases, and his companion Eduardo Noguera, in 1960, made extensive studies on ceramics. Today the city has reclaimed their pyramid, which can be explored via over five miles of tunnels constructed in the early 20th Century. Nearly 500 years after the colonial conquest, the city must contend with a new invasion: tourists. Originally constructed over 2000 years ago, the Great Pyramid of Tepanapa (often referred to as the Great Pyramid of Cholula) is an oddity, puzzling archeologists to this day by incorporating architectural elements of both the Teotihuacan and El Tajin civilizations. When the Spanish arrived at Cholula in 1519, Cortes and his men were so occupied with the decimation of the indigenous people and their more conspicuous holy sites that they failed to recognize the pyramid as such, instead thinking it the perfect hill site for one of their countless new churches! Within the year, La Iglesia de los Remedios was constructed, where it remains to this day.