The main ceremonial center is atop an artificially leveled hill, with remains of residential structures, mostly unexcavated, on long terraces covering the slopes.

The Temple of the Feathered Serpent has fine stylized depictions of that deity in a style which includes apparent influences of Teotihuacan and Maya art.

The high taluds of the pyramid bear relief carvings that depict towns that paid tribute to Xochicalco as well as several seated figures that look Mayan.

Other monuments at the site include several other step-pyramid temples, palaces, three ballcourts, sweat-baths, an unusual row of circular altars, and a cave with steps carved down into it.

Xochicalco was founded in about 650 AD by the Olmeca-Xicalanca, which are a Mayan group of traders from Campeche, at a site that gave them an excellent position along several of the major Mesoamerican trade routes.

In 1976 archaeologist Kenneth Hirth of Pennsylvania State University began a multi-season fieldwork project in which he mapped the entire site and conducted excavations of houses and obsidian workshops.

[citation needed] A 2009 concession granted to Canadian mining company Esperanza Silver threatens the site, according to archaeologist Silvia Garza Tarazona of the Centro del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) Morelos.

The cave was covered with stucco and painted black, yellow and red with a chimney that measured from the base to the surface 8.7 meters, and which is hexagonal in the top.

[5] The Temple of the Feathered Serpent has fine stylized depictions of that deity in a style which includes apparent influences of Teotihuacan and Maya art