Calakmul

Calakmul is a Maya city in the far south of Campeche, in the core of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve and some 35 km from the Guatemalan border. It is one of the largest Maya sites known: the ruins spread over about 70 square kilometres with more than 6,000 recorded structures, and at its height the city ruled a territory of over 13,000 square kilometres. Its modern name, given by the botanist Cyrus Lundell, means "two adjacent mounds"; the inscriptions call the centre Uxte' Tuun, "three stones", and Chiik Naab.

Between roughly 250 BC and AD 700 it was the leading city of the Maya lowlands and the seat of the Kaan, or Snake Head, dynasty. Its rivalry with Tikal shaped the region's politics for more than a century: Calakmul and its allies defeated Tikal in 562, and Tikal struck back and beat Calakmul in 695. Glyph readings give the names of 18 kings, among them Yuknoom the Great (636–686) and Yich'aak K'ahk', "Jaguar Paw". The city slowly declined after that defeat; the last dated stela is from 909. Lundell reported the ruins in 1931, Sylvanus Morley came to study the stelae the next year, and real excavations only began in 1982 with the Universidad Autónoma de Campeche, followed by INAH. They turned up royal tombs and the jade funerary masks now shown in Campeche city.

The visit centres on the Great Plaza and the buildings around it. Structure II, on the south side, is a massive Petén-style pyramid about 55 metres high, built over earlier phases going back to the Preclassic, and from its top the forest runs flat to every horizon, with the second great pyramid, Structure I, rising out of it. Calakmul has more stelae than any other Maya city, around 120, many still standing in front of the temples. Because it sits inside the reserve, howler and spider monkeys, toucans and ocellated turkeys are part of the visit. UNESCO listed the site in 2002 and extended it in 2014 to a mixed natural and cultural World Heritage Site together with the forest around it.