In the Mexican state of Chiapas, near the Usumacinta River about 130 km south of Ciudad del Carmen, lay the ruins of one of Mexico’s most impressive – if lesser known – Mayan sites: Palenque.

A medium-sized site, the Palenque ruins are not as vast as the much larger sites like Tikal. The settlement of Palenque remains to be fully excavated, and, as a result, historians have yet to piece together a number of details surrounding the history of the site. Still, it is able to be appertained that the settlement dates to what is known as the Early Classical period of Mayan history, in this case somewhere in the 5th century AD.

As for the broad overview of the city’s fortunes, inscriptions of monarchs have been found in temples and other areas; it is thought that Palenque survived in a habitable form for around four to five centuries, with the last monarch reigning in the early 800s.

Architecturally, scholars place Palenque ruins at a high value level. Many of the important buildings represent some of the finest carvings Mayan civilization was capable of producing. Some of the more famous examples include the Temple of Inscriptions, the Temple of the Cross, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Foliated Cross.

Photo credit: Flickr