Chichen Itza: Maya Regional Capital in Yucatan, Mexico
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- Mexico
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Maya
- Site type
- City
On this page27 sections
History
Chichen Itza is an ancient Maya city in Yucatan, Mexico, whose monumental center developed mainly between AD 750 and 900 during the Late Classic period. It remained a regional capital during the tenth century and continued into the Terminal Classic and early Postclassic periods, approximately AD 900–1200. The city became a political, economic, social, cultural, and ideological center of the northern Maya Lowlands, while its architecture combined regional Maya traditions with influences associated with central Mexico.
Formation and Regional Power
Ceramic evidence points to a settlement history approaching two thousand years, although substantial monumental architecture is securely established from about AD 750. The earliest securely identified hieroglyphic date corresponds to AD 832, while the latest known date, at the Osario, corresponds to AD 998. The site core expanded especially between AD 750 and 900, and its final arrangement was established after AD 900.
Chichen Itza rose as major centers in the southern Maya area declined and fragmented. Its influence may also have contributed to the weakening of Yaxuna and Coba during the tenth century. The city participated in maritime exchange through Isla Cerritos, its northern coastal port. Objects and materials connected with its networks came from northern and central Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, western Panama, and southern Central America, including obsidian and gold.
The city’s political system remains uncertain. One influential interpretation proposed a multepal, or government by a council of elite lineages rather than a single ruler or dynasty. That view has been challenged, and current interpretations increasingly favor more conventional forms of Maya kingship. The city’s name means “at the mouth of the well of the Itza.” The Itza were an ethnic-lineage group that gained political and economic dominance in northern Yucatan. Earlier names, represented in texts as Uuc Yabnal or related forms, have disputed meanings.
The earliest Late Classic center lay southwest of the Xtoloc cenote, around the structures now associated with Las Monjas, the Caracol, and their platforms. Itza groups appear to have begun arriving in the region around AD 800, although their origins and precise role remain debated. The city’s architecture cannot be divided into simple successive Maya and Toltec stages. Several architectural traditions existed at the same time, including modified Puuc and Chenes forms alongside features associated with central Mexican and Toltec traditions.
Decline and Continuing Religious Importance
Archaeological evidence indicates that Chichen Itza had declined as a regional center by about AD 1100, before the later rise of Mayapan. Colonial Maya texts describe a thirteenth-century conquest by Hunac Ceel, the ruler of Mayapan, and connect him with a survival and prophecy episode involving the Sacred Cenote. The traditional sequence is not securely confirmed by the archaeological evidence.
Declining elite and urban activity did not necessarily end use of the site. The Sacred Cenote continued as a pilgrimage place, and post-Conquest accounts describe an enduring Maya religious importance. Offerings placed in the cenote and continued traditions surrounding the ruins preserved Chichen Itza as a sacred landscape after its political prominence had diminished.
Spanish Invasion and Colonial Ownership
In 1526 Francisco de Montejo received a Spanish charter to conquer Yucatan. His son, Francisco de Montejo the Younger, reached Chichen Itza in the early 1530s, renamed it Ciudad Real, distributed nearby lands among Spanish soldiers, and attempted to establish a capital among the ruins.
The Maya besieged the settlement, cut its coastal supply route, and confined the soldiers within the ancient city. After losing 150 men in an attempted attack, Montejo the Younger secretly abandoned Chichen Itza in 1534. By 1535 the Spanish had been expelled from Yucatan. A later campaign reconquered the peninsula, and by 1588 a land grant that included Chichen Itza had become a working cattle ranch.
Exploration, Excavation, and Conservation
Chichen Itza entered wider international awareness through John Lloyd Stephens’s 1843 book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, illustrated by Frederick Catherwood. Désiré Charnay surveyed and photographed the site in 1860, followed by documentation by Teoberto Maler and Alfred Maudslay in the 1880s.
Augustus Le Plongeon began some of the earliest excavations in 1875. His interpretation of a reclining stone figure as a Maya prince was speculative, but his name for the sculpture, “Chac Mool,” became the general term for this type of Mesoamerican figure. A Chac Mool is a reclining human-form stone sculpture with a dish or tray on the abdomen, probably associated with ritual offerings.
Edward Herbert Thompson purchased Hacienda Chichen, which included the ruins, in 1894 and investigated the site for about thirty years. From 1904 to 1910 he excavated parts of the Osario and dredged the Sacred Cenote, recovering objects and human remains. In 1926 the Mexican government accused him of removing antiquities from the country and seized the hacienda. Thompson did not return to Yucatan. A 1944 Supreme Court decision found that he had not violated the law, and his heirs later sold the property to Fernando Barbachano Peon.
The Carnegie Institution of Washington began long-term research after delays caused by the Mexican Revolution, political instability, and the First World War. From 1924 it carried out extensive excavation, mapping, reconstruction, and restoration, especially at the Temple of the Warriors, the Caracol, Las Monjas, the Mercado, and southern groups. Mexican authorities worked at the same time on El Castillo, the Great Ball Court, the Tzompantli, and the Platforms of the Eagles and Jaguars and Venus.
Carnegie research established a ceramic-based chronology for northern Yucatan and encouraged the interpretation that Maya and Toltec traditions met at Chichen Itza. Later scholarship has questioned a simple migration or conquest model and has emphasized the near-contemporaneity and cultural exchange represented by the site’s different architectural styles. Later INAH investigations have included the Osario, Akab Dzib, Chichen Viejo, the Great Platform, and other groups. Since the 1980s, work has concentrated on re-excavation, consolidation, completion of reconstructions, and research in the southern groups. Excavations around El Castillo began in 2009 under Rafael Cobos to investigate earlier construction phases.
In 1959 José Humberto Gomez discovered a concealed sacred cave network at Balamku, about 3 kilometers from the archaeological zone. The caves contained undisturbed pottery, carved censers, stone tools, ornaments, and other remains. INAH converted part of the network into an underground museum and returned catalogued objects to their archaeological positions. The ruins are federal property and are administered by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, or INAH. Federal legislation enacted in 1972 placed pre-Columbian monuments under federal ownership and protection. The land beneath the principal monuments became state property on 29 March 2010, when Yucatan purchased approximately 80 hectares containing the main buildings.
The Pre-Hispanic City of Chichen-Itza entered the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988 under criteria i, ii, and iii. In 2015 it was also entered in the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection of the Hague Convention.
Remains
The archaeological zone covers approximately 15 square kilometers, while the densely built ceremonial core occupies at least 5 square kilometers. Smaller residential structures extend beyond the mapped core. The city was built across uneven limestone terrain, with important groups levelled or raised on artificial platforms. Low walls once separated several compounds, and more than 80 paved sacbeob, or raised white roads, linked groups to one another and to the center. Buildings were made mainly of limestone masonry and originally carried red, green, blue, and purple painted surfaces, much of which has disappeared.
The Great North Platform
El Castillo
El Castillo, also called the Temple of Kukulcan, is a stepped pyramid about 30 meters high. Its nine square terraces support a summit temple approximately 6 meters high, while the base measures about 55.3 meters on each side. Four stairways rise along the faces, and serpent heads are carved at the base of the northeastern balustrades. Around the equinoxes, late-afternoon shadows can create a descending-serpent effect along the northern staircase. Its association with Kukulcan, the Maya feathered-serpent deity, is interpretive, and a deliberate calendrical purpose has not been demonstrated.
The later pyramid encloses an earlier, smaller pyramid and temple. That inner structure has nine steps, a single northern stairway, and two successive rooms. Excavators found a red-painted jaguar-shaped throne with jade inlays and a Chac Mool inside it. A tunnel reaches the earlier temple, although the throne room was closed to the public in 2006. Geophysical and digital investigations indicate that the pyramid developed through successive enlargements rather than as one construction project.
The Great Ball Court
The Great Ball Court lies about 150 meters northwest of El Castillo and measures approximately 168 by 70 meters. Its parallel side platforms are about 95 meters long and rise roughly 8 meters above the playing area. The walls carry rings carved with intertwined feathered serpents, sloping benches, and relief panels of ballplayers. One panel shows a decapitated player whose blood appears as seven writhing serpents. Whether the scene represents a winner, a loser, or symbolic sacrifice remains uncertain.
The North Temple, also called the Temple of the Bearded Man, is a small masonry building with one principal room, columns, and interior bas-reliefs, including a figure with a beard-like carving. A larger but heavily ruined temple occupies the southern end. The Upper Temple of the Jaguars is built into the court’s eastern wall and faces the playing area. Serpent columns frame its entrance, and a damaged mural inside depicts a battle scene. The Lower Temple of the Jaguars opens behind the court and contains a worn jaguar throne, relief-covered walls, and carved columns.
Platforms and Sacred Structures
The Tzompantli, or Skull Platform, is a T-shaped structure decorated with rows of upright skulls and wooden posts. Its reliefs also show warriors, eagles, jaguars, human hearts, and feathered serpents, reflecting central Mexican influences. Nearby, the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars has stairways on all four sides and relief panels of eagles and jaguars consuming human hearts.
The northern Platform of Venus stands between El Castillo and the Sacred Cenote. Its reliefs include a human-bird figure, the Venus symbol, a bound bundle associated with a calendrical sign, and feathered-serpent imagery. Large stone cones were found inside, although their purpose is unknown. The Temple of the Tables, the northernmost building in a group east of El Castillo, has altars supported by carved male figures with raised arms, commonly called atlantes.
The Temple of the Warriors and Columned Complexes
Temple of the Warriors
The Temple of the Warriors is a large stepped pyramid on the eastern side of the Great Platform. Extensive rows of carved columns stand in front of and beside it. Reliefs depict warriors, eagles, jaguars, serpents, and bird-human figures. A Chac Mool stands at the top of the stairway before the temple entrance. The later temple encloses an earlier Temple of the Chac Mool, whose painted relief columns survived when the interior was filled with rubble.
The Carnegie Institution excavated and restored the temple and its earlier structure between 1925 and 1928. Watercolors captured murals that deteriorated rapidly after exposure. Many show battles, although their interpretation remains debated.
Thousand Columns and Associated Buildings
The Thousand Columns complex extends south and east of the Temple of the Warriors. Its originally roofed halls have collapsed, but many square columns remain, carrying reliefs of warriors, serpents, and bird-human figures. The complex is divided into western, northern, eastern, and southern sections and appears to have provided space for large gatherings, particularly of warriors. A channel in its northeastern area carried rainwater about 40 meters to a rejollada, a natural depression in the limestone.
The complex also contains a small ball court, columned halls, and interconnected buildings. The Temple of the Carved Columns has a front gallery, an interior passage leading to an altar with a Chac Mool, and columns bearing reliefs of approximately forty people. The Temple of the Small Tables remains an unrestored mound. Thompson’s Temple, also called the Palace of Ahau Balam K’awiil, is a two-level building with jaguar imagery and glyphs of the Maya deity K’awiil.
Mercado
The so-called Mercado is a square court and gallery complex at the southern end of the Temple of the Warriors area. Its function was once interpreted as commercial, but it is now considered more likely to have been ceremonial.
The Osario and Cenote Precinct
Osario and Temple of Xtoloc
The Osario is a smaller four-sided stepped pyramid with stairways on every side and a temple at the summit. A central shaft descends about 12 meters into a natural cave. Edward H. Thompson excavated the cave and found skeletons and jade beads, which led to the name “High Priest’s Temple.” The structure is not securely identified as a tomb, and its occupants cannot be demonstrated to have been priests.
The Temple of Xtoloc stands beside the Xtoloc cenote. Its columned entrance, sculpted pillars, and reliefs show people, plants, birds, and mythological scenes.
Sacred Cenote
The Sacred Cenote lies about 400 meters north of El Castillo. This natural limestone sinkhole is approximately 60 meters across, with near-vertical sides descending about 27 meters to the groundwater. It gave Chichen Itza its name and served as a pilgrimage place associated with offerings during drought.
Investigations recovered gold, jade, copper, ceramics, copal, flint, obsidian, shell, wood, rubber, textiles, and human remains. More than fifty skeletons were recovered in some investigations, but whether all represented sacrifice remains debated. Some may have resulted from nonviolent burial or other ritual practices. A separate cave system found about 200 meters north of the cenote during construction of an airstrip in 1967 contained the remains of more than one hundred children, most approximately three to six years old. DNA studies identified the remains as male and found close biological relationships, including two pairs of identical twins. Archaeologists associate the group with a ritual event, although direct evidence of sacrifice has not been established.
Sacbe One
Sacbe Number One runs from the northern precinct toward the Sacred Cenote. It is approximately 270 meters long and 9 meters wide, beginning near the Platform of Venus. Archaeologists have proposed that a large columned structure once stood at its beginning.
Central Architectural Group
Las Monjas and La Iglesia
Las Monjas is a complex of Terminal Classic buildings in a modified Puuc style, a regional Maya tradition known for distinctive masonry and carved facade decoration. Although the Spanish called it “the Nunnery,” the complex was probably a governmental palace or official residence. The adjacent La Iglesia is a small temple with elaborate masks. Las Monjas contains a concentration of hieroglyphic texts dating from the Late to Terminal Classic, many of which mention the ruler K’ak’upakal.
El Caracol
El Caracol stands north of Las Monjas on a large square platform. Its circular form and internal spiral staircase gave it its modern name. The building was constructed in several phases and is commonly interpreted as an astronomical observation building, although its precise function remains uncertain.
Akab Dzib
Akab Dzib lies about 150 meters east of El Caracol beside a rejollada. Its name means “dark writing” or “mysterious writing.” An inscription identifies Yahawal Cho’ K’ak’, a member of the Kokom family, as its owner. The building is approximately 6 meters high, 50 meters long, and 15 meters wide.
Casa Colorada and Casa del Venado
Casa Colorada, or the Red House, is among the best-preserved buildings at Chichen Itza. It retains traces of red paint and has a Maya name, Chichanchob, possibly meaning “small holes.” A chamber contains an extensive hieroglyphic inscription mentioning rulers and a date corresponding to AD 869. INAH restored a small ball court attached to its rear wall in 2009.
Casa del Venado, or House of the Deer, stands nearby. Only part of the building survives. Its name is traditional, and the supposed deer image that may have inspired it is no longer preserved.
Southern and Peripheral Groups
Old Chichen
Old Chichen, or Chichen Viejo, lies south of the central area and contains a concentration of Puuc-style buildings. These include the Initial Series Group, the Phallic Temple, the Platform of the Great Turtle, the Temple of the Owls, and the Temple of the Monkeys.
The Group of the Initial Series, also called the Group of the Date, lies about 1.2 kilometers south of El Castillo. Its central temple contains a reused lintel inscription corresponding to 30 July 878. Because the lintel came from an earlier building, the date does not necessarily belong to the present structure.
Main Southwest Group and Chultun Group
The Main Southwest Group contains a dense cluster of small structures, a columned hall, and the pyramid known as Castillo Viejo. The Chultun Group lies about 1.3 kilometers east of the center and is connected by Sacbe 19. Other peripheral groups extend beyond these areas.
Balankanche
Balankanche is a network of sacred caves approximately 3 kilometers from the archaeological zone. It contains pre-Columbian pottery, censers, idols, stone tools, jewelry, and other offerings left in place. Investigations indicate use from at least the Preclassic period through the post-Conquest era. The caves form part of the wider sacred landscape associated with Chichen Itza.
The Great Museum of Chichen Itza opened in 2024 and houses archaeological material associated with the site, including Chac Mool sculptures, a stone table with captive reliefs, and offerings recovered from the sacbeob.
