Chichen Itza

The camera stands among the stone columns on the eastern side of the main plaza, with El Castillo directly across the open grass. The pyramid is the thing everyone comes for - nine stepped terraces, a staircase up each face, and a temple on the flat top. Around the camera the ground is a forest of squat square columns, each carved, standing in ranks where a roof used to be; this is the colonnade that gives the Temple of the Warriors group its other name. Low ruined walls run between the two. The panorama shows what a photograph of the pyramid never does, which is how much else is standing on this plaza.

Chichen Itza is the second most visited place in all of Mexico. Within the complex are numerous stone buildings representing a variety of pre-Columbian Mayan architectural styles. The buildings are linked by an intricate network of raised paved roads called sacbeob (singular, sacbe) that are as significant as the roads built by the ancient Romans throughout Europe and by the Minoans of ancient Greece. More than 100 of these roads have been found, and they lead in all directions, probably once connecting with other settlements scattered around the Mayan Empire.

View from the top of El Castillo The grand Temple of Kukulkan (the Mayan name for Quetzacoatl) is also known as El Castillo, meaning The Castle. This is the iconic step pyramid that is the most recognizable structure in the complex. There are stairways to the summit on all four sides of the pyramid, and each stairway consists of 365 steps. The steps are steeper than normal steps, so the climb is fairly strenuous. But the view from the top is quite spectacular and well worth the effort.

El Caracol - The Observatory Caracol is the Spanish word for “snail,” and this striking structure received this nickname because of the snail-like spiral staircase in its interior. It is a circular structure rather than rectangular like the other buildings, and sits prominently on a platform. Because of this unusual shape, most experts believe this was an observatory. This theory is bolstered by the fact that the windows and doors are aligned with the astrological path of Venus.

Great Ball Court Ball courts are common features within many Mayan ruins, and there are a number of them at Chichen Itza. The most impressive is the Great Ball Court, which is the largest such sports court found in all of the Mayan ruins across Mexico and Central America. The court is about 223’ x 545’ in area and bordered on two sides by stone walls nearly 40 feet high. Rings, carved in the shape of intertwined serpents, sit high on each of the walls. Carvings of ball players can be seen at the base of the walls, including one decapitated player. It is believed that the captain of the losing team may have been dealt a sentence of death by beheading.