Archaeologists working in a rundown suburb of Mexico City have discovered an enormous, sixth-century pyramid.

The pyramid, a ceremonial building built by descendants of the Maya civilisation around the same time as other mysterious structures were rising across Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, was found underneath a hill that is now a holy site for Catholics.

Since 1833, when the neighbourhood was spared a cholera epidemic sweeping through the rest of the city, the hill in Iztapalapa has been the centrepiece of a re-enactment of the Crucifixion that attracts hundreds of thousands of worshippers and is one of Mexico's best known festivals.

"When they first saw us digging there, the local people just couldn’t believe there was a pyramid there," said Jesus Sanchez, one of the archaeologists who announced the find yesterday. "It was only when the slopes and shapes of the pyramid, the floors with altars were found, that the finally believed us."

"The majority of the people now feel happy and proud, and have helped out a lot," said Senor Sanchez, who has been working on the site since 2004, searching for the outline of the pyramid, whose sides are 150m (492ft) long and whose flat top in 18m (59ft) high.

Commanding views across the plains and safe from flooding, the hills of the Mexico Valley are littered with pyramids, altars, skulls and other curious remains from the succession of civilisations that ruled central America from the time of the ancient Egyptians.

After the Spanish conquest in the early sixteenth century, many former temples of the ancient Mayans and early-modern Aztecs were forcibly supplanted by Christian sites. Mexico City's Zacatecas cathedral is on the remains of an Aztec altar, while the country's national miracle, the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe, took place on a hillside where the Aztecs worshipped Tonantzin, the mother of their gods.

But according to Senor Sanchez, the Catholic appropriation of the hill in Iztapalapa was a pure coincidence, coming 1,000 years after the Teotihuacan, Toltec and Coyotlatelcas cultures that used the pyramid ceased to exist.

And now, the meeting of civilisations on the hill will prevent the pyramid from being fully explored. Senor Sanchez said he and his team will fill in their trenches and pits before Good Friday to allow this year's festival to go ahead.

"Both the pre-Hispanic structure and the Holy Week rituals are part of our cultural legacy, so we have to look for a way to protect both cultural values," he said.

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