A city built on a hillside
Palenque sits in the foothills of the Chiapas highlands in southern Mexico, where limestone ridges drop towards the Gulf coastal plain. The Maya builders used that slope. Temples and palaces stand on terraces cut into the hill, and a stream called the Otolum was channelled through stone-lined conduits, partly under the central plaza. Compared with the vast plazas of Tikal, Palenque’s core is compact, and its buildings are known for slender proportions and delicate decoration. The Palenque dynasty history behind the buildings is a separate subject; here the focus is on the stone itself.
The Temple of Inscriptions
The best-known building is the Temple of Inscriptions, a stepped pyramid of eight levels with a small temple on top. It was built mainly during the reign of K’inich Janaab Pakal, who ruled from 615 to 683 CE, and was finished by his son. The name comes from three large panels of hieroglyphic text inside the temple, among the longest Classic Maya inscriptions known. They record the history of the dynasty, dates and rituals, and they were an important source once Maya glyph decipherment had made such texts readable.
In 1948 and 1949 the Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier noticed that a stone slab in the temple floor had finger holes. Lifting it revealed a stairway packed with rubble, which his team cleared over several seasons. In 1952 they reached a vaulted chamber at the bottom, below the level of the plaza.
The tomb of K’inich Janaab Pakal
Inside the chamber stood a large stone sarcophagus holding the remains of a man now identified as Pakal. He had been buried with jade ornaments and a jade mosaic mask. The lid is carved with a scene often read as the king falling or being reborn, set among symbols of the underworld and the world tree. Some popular books claim the carving shows a spacecraft, an idea long repeated in discussions of ancient astronaut claims. Archaeologists reject that reading; the imagery matches well-known Maya cosmological motifs, and the glyphs on the sarcophagus name Pakal and give his dates.
A stucco-lined channel, sometimes called a psychoduct, runs from the tomb up the stairway to the temple above, likely linking the dead king with the living world. Because the stairway was sealed and the tomb lies inside the pyramid, the temple appears to have been planned as a funerary monument. The idea of a pyramid-tomb invites comparison with the Giza pyramid complex, but the two traditions developed separately and the buildings differ greatly in form and use.
The Palace and its tower
Close to the Temple of Inscriptions is the Palace, a large complex of galleries, courtyards and interior rooms built up over more than a century by several rulers. Its long vaulted corridors are lit by doorways and, in places, narrow openings. Maya builders typically used the corbelled vault, in which stone courses step inward until they meet at the top, and Palenque’s builders made their vaults unusually high and slim.
Rising from the Palace courtyard is a four-story tower, unusual among known Maya buildings. Scholars have proposed several roles: an observation post, a ceremonial lookout, or a symbol of royal prestige. The popular idea that it was an astronomical observatory is debated, and the evidence is not decisive. Courtyards also contain stone throne rooms and carved panels showing captives and ceremonies, and the surviving stucco decoration hints at how brightly painted the building once was.
Other temples around the plaza
Across the plaza stands the Temple of the Sun, the Temple of the Foliated Cross and the Temple of the Cross, which together form the Group of the Crosses. They were built under Pakal’s son, K’inich Kan Bahlam II, in the late seventh century. Each has a small inner shrine and a roof comb, a tall decorative crest rising above the roof, and each held carved tablets recording stories of the gods and the ruler’s ancestors. The designs show how Palenque’s kings used architecture to link themselves with the creator deities, a theme that appears in many accounts of Maya deities and rituals.
Temple XIII, near the Temple of Inscriptions, holds a second royal burial, discovered in 1994, of a woman sometimes called the Red Queen because the remains were covered with red cinnabar. Her identity is still discussed.
Visiting and preserving Palenque
Palenque was largely abandoned by the early ninth century or soon after, and the forest covered it. Spanish officials visited in the eighteenth century, and John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood published a famous account in 1841. Only a fraction of the settlement has been excavated, with many unexcavated mounds beyond the main core. The site is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and attracts visitors; conservation of the stucco and stonework against humidity and plant growth is a continuing effort. Close to the ruins, descendants of the ancient Maya live in the region today.