Kohunlich

The site lies 9 km south of Highway 186 and covers about 21 acres (85,000 m2), surrounded by dense sub-tropical rainforest. It contains almost 200 mounds that remain largely unexcavated, and many structures are still covered with thick vegetation and overgrown by trees. The city was elaborately planned and engineered, with raised platforms and pyramids, citadels, courtyards and plazas surrounded with palace platforms, all laid out to channel drainage into a system of cisterns and an enormous reservoir to collect rainwater.

The road approaches the site from the north and leads into an enormous central plaza ringed by pyramids and temple platforms. To the north there is a massive, raised acropolis, or citadel, with a palace complex around a courtyard to the north-west. Further east lies the Temple of the Masks, built in honour of the sun god.

The Temple of the Masks was built around 500 AD and is one of the oldest structures at Kohunlich. After 700 AD it was covered over with a Terminal Classic construction, which protected the masks and accounts for their very good state of preservation today. The only standing remains of the later temple are some steps in the lower portion of the stair. Originally there were eight carved masks flanking the central staircase; only five remain, three having been looted.

The city appears to have functioned as a regional centre and stop along the trade routes through the southern Yucatán, from Campeche and the Rio Bec area to the west, and the cities along the east coast and to the south, in the Petén region of Guatemala and neighbouring Belize.