Palenque

Palenque was a mayan city that was inhabited between about 200 b.c. and 800 a.d. and was absorbed by the jungle afterwards. It was discovered accidential in 1773, but by now only an estimated area of less than 10 percent of the whole city had been explored, the rest, which might be about thousand buildings, is still covered by the jungle.

Like in Monte Albán, the most buildings of the archeologic site of Palenque are temples. I really need to figure out where all the people of the city lived back then. Palenque has a palace, where the kings and the king family lived. These palace also has a tower, which was probably used as an observatory tower, and lots of patios to light up the rooms around the patios. I really like the style of their buildings, especially the palace. In the following picture you can see the palace on the right side.

The building on the opposite of the palace is the temple of inscriptions, which is the most popular one and also has a small corridor with wand paintings that leads to a chamber tomb. The king that was buried there, Pakal, designed the temple (his son built it) and is now the best known king of Palenque. The building is the biggest one in Palenque, but unfortunately we were not allowed to go on top of it.