The Ancient Mayan City of Coba

Around 30 miles away from Tulum and the Caribbean coast lie the ruins of the ancient Mayan City of Coba, from the middle and late classic period, from 500 to 900 AD. The city stretches over almost 40 square miles around five smaller lagoons. It might have been home to more than 50,000 people. Among […]

Spanish colonial times have left their architectural mark on the Yucatán Peninsula. While on this trip I avoided most larger cities, however some nice example of colonial architecture ca be found at the Hacienda Chichen which served as an archaeologists’ base at the time of the great excavations and restorations of the nearby Mayan city […]

The place “the mouth of the well of the Itza”, as “Chich’en Itza” translates from Yucatec Maya, was already inhabited early on in Mayan times, and it was known as a major city in the 6th century AD. Most of the Chichen Itza we can see today, however, was built much later in the 10th […]

To the south of the great plaza with the temple of Kukulcan in Chichen Itza stretches an area of smaller buildings and pyramids. I was in particular impressed by the so called nunnery group of buildings, with ornaments carved into virtually every stone wall. Another prominent temple is “El Caracol”, the observatory. Its large platform […]