Chimu Architecture

Chimu architecture is the building tradition of the Chimu culture and its Chimor state, which emerged around 900 AD on the northern coast of Peru, succeeding the earlier Moche culture, and lasted until its conquest by the Inca emperor Topa Inca Yupanqui around 1470, by which point Chimor controlled roughly a thousand kilometers of coastline as the largest kingdom of the Late Intermediate Period. Its capital, Chan Chan, near present-day Trujillo, held an estimated population of about thirty thousand people and lacked a single unifying urban plan, instead containing six principal classes of structure. Its most distinctive buildings were the ciudadelas, ten large walled royal compounds enclosed by adobe walls up to nine meters high, giving them a fortress-like appearance and containing U-shaped rooms with raised floors and courtyards, sometimes as many as fifteen per palace. Chimu builders worked primarily in rectangular adobe forms, and the roughly twenty-six thousand commoners of Chan Chan lived in barrios on the city's periphery, in single-family dwellings with kitchens, work spaces, storage areas and animal enclosures.