Inhab­it­ed over a peri­od of 1,500 years by a suc­ces­sion of peo­ples — Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mix­tecs — the ter­races, dams, canals, pyra­mids and arti­fi­cial mounds of Monte Alban were lit­er­al­ly carved out of the moun­tain and are the sym­bols of a sacred topog­ra­phy. The near­by city of Oax­a­ca, which is built on a grid pat­tern, is a good exam­ple of Span­ish colo­nial town plan­ning. The solid­i­ty and vol­ume of the city‘s build­ings show that they were adapt­ed to the earth­­quake-prone region in which these archi­tec­tur­al gems were con­struct­ed.