El Castillo / Temple of Kukulkan

Teplo del Barbado

Templo de los Jaguares y Escudos

Platforma de los Craneos. T-shaped platform is festooned with carved skulls and eagles tearing open the chests of men to eat their hearts. In ancient days this platform held heads of sacrificial victims.

Platforma de los Craneos

Platforma de las Aguilas y los Jaguares. Carvings on the platform display jaguars and eagles gruesomely grabbing human hearts in their claws.

Cenote Sagrado. A huge natural sunken well that gave the city of Chichen Itza its name is about 35 meters deep and has 60 meters in diameter.

Dominating the center of Chichén is the Temple of Kukulkan (the Maya name for Quetzalcoatl), often referred to as “El Castillo” (the castle). This step pyramid has a ground plan of square terraces with stairways up each of the four sides to the temple on top. On the Spring and Autumn equinox, at the rising and setting of the sun, the corner of the structure casts a shadow in the shape of a plumed serpent - Kukulcan, or Quetzalcoatl - along the west side of the north staircase. On these two annual occasions, the shadows from the corner tiers slither down the northern side of the pyramid with the sun’s movement to the serpent’s head at the base. Mesoamerican cultures periodically built larger pyramids atop older ones, and this is one such example. In the mid 1930s, the Mexican government sponsored an excavation of El Castillo. After several false starts, they discovered a staircase under the north side of the pyramid. By digging from the top, they found another temple buried below the current one. Inside the temple chamber was a Chac Mool statue and a throne in the shape of Jaguar, painted red and with spots made of inlaid jade. The Mexican government excavated a tunnel from the base of the north staircase, up the earlier pyramid’s stairway to the hidden temple, and opened it to tourists. In 2006, INAH closed the throne room to the public. (from Wikipedia)

Templo de los Guerreros - Temple of Warriors

The Temple of the Warriors consists of a large stepped pyramid fronted and flanked by rows of carved columns depicting warriors. At the top of the stairway on the pyramid’s summit (and leading towards the entrance of the pyramid’s temple) is a Chac Mool.

Grupo de las Mil Columnas. The group of three structures including the Temple of The Warriors got its name according to the forest of pillars.

Columns in a palace in Chichen Itza - Walls were built between these columns to accomodate changing needs.

El Osario, Tumba del Gran Sacerdote

El Osario, Tumba del Gran Sacerdote

La Iglesia

El Caracol was called the Snail by the Spaniards for its spiral staircase. It’s one of the most fascinating and important buildings in Chichen Itza. The windows in the observatory’s dome are aligned with the appearance of certain stars at specific dates.

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