El Cerrito was built atop a rocky outcrop in the southern part of the Querétaro Valley. Surrounded by fertile lands, a river, and a marsh, it met all the criteria for the sacred landscape of the original "Tollan", the mythic place of origin of the Toltec-Chichimeca peoples. In this primordial land, people had all the resources needed to survive and lived in harmony with their main deities. When it was time to send different peoples to inhabit the world, each group was given a patron god and a specific language. This origin story is depicted in the "Codex Cuauhtinchan 2", which shows "Chicomoztoc", the Hill of the Seven Caves, from which the seven Toltec-Chichimeca peoples emerge to populate the earth, guided by their patron goddess "Itzpapálotl".

In this gallery, you can see the only known carved stone stela in Mesoamerica depicting the goddess "Itzpapálotl", discovered at El Cerrito. A timeline also highlights the major Toltec sites across Mesoamerica: Tula, Chichén Itzá, Tututepec, and El Cerrito.

Around 900 CE, the Toltecs founded a new earthly "Tollan" in northern Mesoamerica. The architecture created there represented the most advanced construction of its time—both in scale and in symbolic complexity. Notable features include sunken courtyards, sloped and panelled walls adorned with sculpture, skull-offering altars, and columned halls. Among these structures stands a unique thirteen-tiered pyramid—the only one of its kind in Mesoamerica. According to Toltec cosmology, the pyramid symbolized one of the three cosmic layers: the heavens, the earth, and the underworld.

Pyramids were often built over springs or caves, believed to be the passageway of the cosmic axis that connected all planes of existence. In Room 2, visitors will find illustrated panels explaining this concept, sculptures with calendrical glyphs, and an architectural element shaped like a serpent’s head. The room concludes with a scale model that reconstructs the ceremonial center—centered on the pyramid—which can also be viewed through the museum’s only window.

Ceremonial centers were rich in offerings. Some were "constructive offerings"—objects intentionally buried within altars during their construction as gifts to the gods or natural forces. Each offering was unique and tied to the specific deity a temple was dedicated to.

One such offering, found inside a small altar, was dedicated to the goddess "Itzpapálotl". It included hand-held incense burners containing burned white flint blades, skull-shaped shell beads, and obsidian tubes. Large-format sculptures, known as "coronamientos," were also discovered here. These soft-stone carvings originally decorated the upper façades of columned halls. Some, with crossed dart motifs, belonged to a hall at the pyramid’s base dedicated to an omnipresent deity such as "Quetzalcóatl". Others, with solar dart motifs, adorned the façade of a southern hall devoted to a solar deity.

The plazas and altars of the site also served daily ritual purposes, where offerings were made to sanctify the space—many burned in large ceremonial braziers. The centerpiece of this gallery is an hourglass-shaped brazier in which items such as bone awls, projectile points, clay spindle whorls, and personal ornaments like shell pendants and rings were burned.

Other items, not burned, came from far-flung regions—including "abalone" and "spondylus" shells, clay spindle whorls decorated with tar, lead-glazed vessels, clay figurines, and even a copper bell. This wide variety of origins points to an intense network of trade stretching across Mesoamerica from south to north and east to west. Visitors can examine detailed maps that illustrate not only the flow of goods but also the diffusion of Toltec symbols and iconography—such as "Chac Mool" and "Itzpapálotl"—throughout the region.