Palenque Archaeological Zone
Classic Maya city in the Chiapas rainforest, famed for Pakal's tomb and its hieroglyphic inscriptions.
Palenque, known to its rulers as Lakamha', stands on the first ridges of the Chiapas highlands where they meet the Tabasco plain. Its surviving buildings belong mainly to the Late Classic period, between the seventh and ninth centuries, when the city dominated a large area of the western Maya lowlands. Only a fraction of the estimated fifteen hundred structures has been cleared; the remainder lies beneath dense tropical forest. UNESCO inscribed the site and its surrounding national park on the World Heritage List in 1987.
The city is celebrated for the refinement of its limestone architecture and for the quantity of its carved and modelled texts, which allowed epigraphers to reconstruct a dynastic history in unusual detail. In 1952 Alberto Ruz Lhuillier uncovered a vaulted crypt beneath the Temple of the Inscriptions containing the sarcophagus of K'inich Janaab' Pakal. The Palace, with its distinctive four-storey tower, and the Cross Group temples carry further inscribed panels. An on-site museum named after Ruz displays finds from the excavations.
Highlights
- Temple of the Inscriptions, burial pyramid of the ruler Pakal
- The Palace and its unusual four-storey observation tower
- Cross Group temples with carved panels and hieroglyphic texts
- Alberto Ruz Lhuillier site museum displaying excavated finds
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