Palenque rises from rainforest in the Chiapas foothills, its temples still half swallowed by jungle. It holds the most famous single object in Maya art, the jade mosaic sarcophagus lid of Pakal the Great, and a greater share of surviving stucco relief than any other Maya city.
At a glance
Palenque sits in a jungle setting in the Chiapas foothills, with streams and waterfalls running through the archaeological zone. Only a small fraction of the estimated structures on site have been mapped and excavated; the rest remains under jungle cover, soil and vegetation.
The city reached its height under K’inich Janaab’ Pakal I, known as Pakal the Great, whose sixty-eight-year reign is described as the longest of any monarch in the pre-Columbian Americas. Palenque is also unusual for the survival of its stucco sculpture: after the city’s abandonment around 800 CE, dense jungle cover created shade and moderate humidity, conditions gentler than the extreme humidity of the Petén lowlands, which allowed painted and carved stucco to survive in far better condition than elsewhere in the Maya world.
Key facts
- Location: Palenque Archaeological Zone, Chiapas, Mexico (17.4838° N, 92.0464° W)
- Founded and abandoned: settled from around 100 BCE, reached its peak under Pakal the Great (615–683 CE), abandoned by the ninth century CE
- Signature monument: the Temple of the Inscriptions, built as Pakal’s funerary pyramid, roughly 27 metres high
- Signature object: the jade mosaic sarcophagus lid of Pakal, a single carved limestone slab measuring 3.8 by 2.2 metres and weighing around five tonnes
- Discovery of the tomb: excavated by the Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, work beginning in 1948 and the burial chamber reached in 1952
- World Heritage status: inscribed by UNESCO in 1987
History
Palenque was first settled in the late Preclassic period. Its Classic-period dynasty weakened after military setbacks in the early seventh century, and the city was governed for a period by Lady Sak K’uk’, mother of Pakal and, according to the record, the only female ruler in the dynasty’s history. Pakal himself acceded at the age of twelve in 615 CE and reigned for sixty-eight years, during which Palenque recovered from earlier defeats and expanded its territory, defeating Bonampak and Santa Elena and sacrificing the ruler of Pomona, and continuing conflict with Toniná into the 670s.
Pakal commissioned the Temple of the Inscriptions as his own funerary monument; he died in 683 CE, recorded in some sources as aged eighty, though inscriptions on stelae imply an age of one hundred and twenty-eight, a discrepancy scholars still debate as either a chronological error or a deliberate act of political legitimacy. His son, K’inich Kan Bahlam II, built the Group of the Cross temples from 684 CE, and his grandson, K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb’ III, extended the Palace and added its observation tower between 721 and 736 CE. A second royal tomb, in the so-called Olvidado Temple hidden nearby in the jungle, was not discovered until 1994.
Palenque’s power declined after 800 CE and the city was abandoned during the Terminal Classic period, disappearing under jungle growth. It was rediscovered by the Spanish priest Don Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada around 1700, formally reported by the Spanish officer Antonio del Río in 1786, and visited by the American writer John Lloyd Stephens and the artist Frederick Catherwood in 1839, whose account was among the first to identify the ruins correctly as the work of an indigenous American civilisation rather than Egyptian or Greek settlers. Systematic excavation of Pakal’s tomb followed in the twentieth century under Alberto Ruz Lhuillier.
What you see
The Temple of the Inscriptions dominates the site, its interior staircase of sixty-nine steps descending twenty-five metres to Pakal’s burial chamber; the chamber and its sarcophagus lid are no longer open to visitors owing to their fragility, and the jade mosaic death mask found with the burial, made of around two hundred jade pieces with shell and pyrite for the eyes, is now held at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The lid itself carries a carved scene of Pakal falling into the underworld at the moment of death, with a cross-shaped ceiba tree, the Maya World Tree, rising from his body; a 1969 claim by Erich von Däniken that the image showed an astronaut at spacecraft controls was thoroughly rejected by archaeologists, who identified every element of the carving within established Maya cosmology.
El Palacio, the Palace complex, spreads across four courtyards with galleries and towers built for administrative and residential use between roughly 600 and 700 CE, with later additions by Pakal’s successors. Its four-storey square tower, reached by an internal spiral staircase, is thought to be the only known multi-storey tower in Classic Maya architecture and may have served for astronomical observation, including tracking the planet Venus. The Group of the Cross, comprising the Temple of the Cross, the Temple of the Foliated Cross and the Temple of the Sun, was built between 684 and 692 CE under Pakal’s son and carries some of the finest surviving stucco sculpture on the site; the Temple of the Foliated Cross retains fragments of its original polychrome paint, the Temple of the Sun holds a jaguar throne, and the Temple of the Cross bears a relief of the Maize God.
Practical information
- Access to the tomb: the burial chamber inside the Temple of the Inscriptions is closed to the public because of the fragility of its contents
- Where to see the death mask: the jade mosaic mask recovered from Pakal’s tomb is displayed at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, not on site
- Current visiting arrangements: opening times and any entry conditions are best checked through the site’s own official channels before travelling
Getting there
Palenque lies in the rainforest of the Chiapas foothills in southern Mexico. As only a small proportion of the ancient city has been cleared of jungle, much of the surrounding archaeological zone remains forested; travel arrangements and current access routes are best confirmed with the site’s official visitor information before setting out.
Nearby
- Bonampak — a Maya city defeated by Pakal’s forces during his military campaigns in the same Chiapas region
- Santa Elena — another centre brought under Palenque’s control in the seventh century
- Toniná — the rival city with which Palenque remained at war into the 670s CE
Sources
- UNESCO
- Alberto Ruz Lhuillier
- Linda Schele, David Stuart and Peter Mathews
- Mesa Redonda de Palenque
- John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood
- Antonio del Río
- Erich von Däniken, Chariots of the Gods
- National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City
- Guinness World Records
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