Labná

Labná is a small Maya city in the Puuc hills, at the southern end of the Puuc Route, and many consider it the purest example of the Puuc style. It flourished in the 9th and 10th centuries and, with Uxmal, Kabah and Sayil, is part of the World Heritage Site declared in 1996.

Its most famous structure is the Arch, a corbelled passage that once connected two courtyards. Both faces are richly carved: one side has stone latticework and small niches shaped like the thatched Maya houses still seen in Yucatán villages today. Next to it stands El Mirador, a pyramid topped by a temple with a tall roof comb that was once decorated with stucco figures.

At the other end of a white causeway, or sacbé, is the Palace, a long building on a raised terrace with many rooms and a carved façade that includes masks of the rain god Chaac and the open jaws of a serpent with a human head emerging from them. Like other Puuc cities, Labná had no surface water and depended on chultunes, underground cisterns, and you can see some of them on the site.