Copán Archaeological Park
Classic Maya royal city with the longest known Maya hieroglyphic text and a celebrated court of stelae.
Copán lies in a small river valley in western Honduras close to the Guatemalan border. A Maya settlement existed here for centuries, but the city as visitors see it dates from AD 426, when K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo' founded a dynasty that ruled for sixteen generations. Its rulers commissioned a dense field of carved stelae and altars in a soft volcanic tuff that allowed sculptors to work almost in the round, and the resulting portraits of the ruler Waxaklajuun Ub'aah K'awiil are among the finest surviving Maya sculpture.
The Acropolis is a stack of superimposed temples and palaces raised over four centuries; tunnelling by archaeologists has exposed earlier buildings inside it, including the painted stucco temple known as Rosalila. Structure 26 carries the Hieroglyphic Stairway, sixty-two steps bearing around 2,200 glyphs, the longest Maya inscription known. Altar Q records the dynastic succession in sixteen seated figures. The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1980; a separate sculpture museum near the entrance holds original carvings and a full-size replica of Rosalila.
Highlights
- Hieroglyphic Stairway with roughly 2,200 glyphs on sixty-two steps
- Great Plaza stelae carved almost in the round in volcanic tuff
- Altar Q, showing all sixteen rulers of the Copán dynasty
- Sculpture museum with a full-size replica of the Rosalila temple
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