We study the duplicial objects of Dwyer and Kan, which generalize the cyclic objects
of Connes. We describe duplicial objects in terms of the decalage comonads, and we
give a conceptual account of the construction of duplicial objects due to Böhm and
Ştefan. This is done in terms of a 2-categorical generalization of Hochschild
homology. We also study duplicial structure on nerves of categories, bicategories, and
monoidal categories.