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Huaca de la Luna is a large adobe brick structure built mainly by the Moche people of northern Trujillo – Peru.
The city of the Moche was established in the Moche valley at the foot of Cerro Blanco.
This great power center grew between 100 AD and 800 AD The city was dominated by two imposing mud brick structures: the great temple known as the Huaca de la Luna, and the building which was the residence of the Moche rulers and is known as the Huaca del Sol. Between these two structures a small city, or urban nucleus, grew this one was inhabited by urban specialists, craftspeople dedicated to the production of objects which would have been used by the rulers and priests in their activities.
The Huaca de la Luna is composed of two buildings which functioned as temples: the Old Temple and the New Temple. The old Temple was enlarged, and it was used between 100 AD 600 AD.
The New Temple was built and used between 600 AD and 800 AD. It is situated at the northeast corner of the complex, on the slopes of Cerro Blanco. There existed a strong relationship between the sacred hill known as Cerro Blanco and the sea, river and desert. That is why the Moche built their main temple at this site. The Huaca de la Luna was their axis mundi, the center of their world, where the earth was symbolically joined with the upper world of the gods and the lower world inhabited by their ancestors, who were buried at the foot of and in the interior of this sacred building.