What Is the Most Famous Maya Pyramid?

The most famous Maya pyramid in the world is El Castillo at Chichén Itzá, the great capital of the northern Yucatán in the Late and Terminal Classic periods. The pyramid stands at the heart of the ceremonial precinct of Chichén Itzá, where it is visited by millions of people every year. It was dedicated to K’uk’ulkan, the Maya Feathered Serpent (the same god the Aztecs would later call Quetzalcoatl). It is also, by deliberate design, a calendar in stone: the four stairways, the 9 stepped levels, the 52 flat panels on each face, and the 365 steps in total reproduce the major cycles of the Maya calendar.

This page describes the pyramid, its place in the city of Chichén Itzá, the equinox shadow phenomenon that draws visitors twice a year, and the building’s role in the wider Maya world. For the broader architectural context, see Maya pyramids, temples, and sacred architecture. For the construction technique, see how Maya pyramids were built without metal tools. For the temple that contains the tomb of Pakal, see the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque.

A pyramid in the northern Yucatán

El Castillo (Spanish for “the castle”) is the popular name for the structure the Maya called, in their own inscriptions, the Pyramid of K’uk’ulkan. The name is appropriate, since the building is in plan a classic radial pyramid with four stairways rising from a square base to a small temple at the summit. It stands at the center of a large plaza at the north end of Chichén Itzá, with the Great Ballcourt to the north, the Temple of the Jaguars and the Temple of Warriors to the east and west, and the Sacred Cenote a short walk to the north.

The pyramid is a late Terminal Classic construction, probably built and rebuilt in stages between c. 800 and 1100 CE. The structure visible today is the outer of two nested pyramids. In the 1930s the Mexican archaeologists found that the visible pyramid had been built around an earlier, smaller pyramid of the same form, and a tunnel now allows visitors to climb inside both. The outer pyramid dates to the Toltec-influenced phase of Chichén Itzá, when the city took on a strong central-Mexican flavor.

The shape of the building

The pyramid is a stepped, nine-level structure of dressed limestone set in lime mortar, with a stucco finish. The base is approximately 55 meters on each side, and the height is about 30 meters. Each of the four sides has a single monumental stairway, rising from a stone platform at the base to the temple at the summit. The stairways are steep, with a slope of about 50 degrees, and each has 91 steps; combined with the upper platform of the temple, the total number of steps is 365, equal to the number of days in the solar haab year.

The four sides of the pyramid are divided by the stairways into triangular sections that meet at a flat plinth at the top of each level. Each face of the pyramid has 52 flat panels, one for each week of the Calendar Round (the interlocking 260-day and 365-day cycles). The combined effect is a building that reproduces, in stone and step, the basic structure of the Maya calendar.

The temple on top

At the summit of the pyramid is a small square temple, oriented to the cardinal directions, with doorways on the north and south. The temple houses a throne in the form of a red-painted jaguar, with eyes of jade and shell, and a bench in the form of a Chacmool (a reclining figure with a bowl on its stomach for offerings). The temple is reached only by the steep, narrow stairways of the four sides.

Inside the temple, a small interior staircase leads to the roof comb, where a ceremonial platform is preserved. The roof comb of the inner pyramid (visible through the doorway of the outer temple) preserves fragments of the original painted stucco, including the red, blue, and yellow polychrome of the Late Classic façades.

The equinox shadow

The most famous phenomenon of El Castillo is the equinox shadow, observed at sunset on the spring and autumn equinoxes (around 21 March and 21 September each year). As the sun sets, the angle of the stairway on the north side of the pyramid casts a shadow on the balustrade of the north stairway that, combined with the carved serpent heads at the base, produces the illusion of a serpent slithering down the pyramid.

The shadow effect is not coincidental. The angle of the sun, the angle of the stairway, and the angle of the carved serpent heads are all calibrated so that, for about 45 minutes at sunset, the shadow is shaped like a feathered serpent. The carved heads at the base of the north stairway are wide and rounded, with the upper jaw curved like a beak; the carved heads of the balustrade are spaced so that, at the equinox, the shadow of each step meets the next in a wavy line.

The phenomenon draws thousands of visitors to Chichén Itzá at the equinoxes each year. The Mexican government has built a small amphitheater at the foot of the pyramid to accommodate the audience.

The Cenote of Sacrifice

A short walk north of El Castillo lies the Cenote of Sacrifice (Cenote Sagrado), the natural sinkhole that gave Chichén Itzá its name (Chichén Itzá, “at the mouth of the well of the Itza”). The cenote was the destination of human offerings, including young women, children, and war captives, as well as jade, gold, copper, and pottery. Edward H. Thompson dredged the cenote between 1904 and 1907, recovering the largest single body of pre-Columbian gold and jade ever found in the Americas, including the famous jadeite mosaic disks and masks now in the Peabody Museum at Harvard. The cenote and its offerings are discussed in Maya pottery, jade, and material culture.

The Great Ballcourt

North of El Castillo is the Great Ballcourt of Chichén Itzá, the largest ballcourt in Mesoamerica, with a playing alley 168 meters long and 70 meters wide. The court is I-shaped, with two parallel masonry benches, sloped playing walls, and stone rings mounted high on the side walls. The carved panels of the temple on the south side of the court show scenes of ritual decapitation, and the carved rings are decorated with intertwined serpents. The ballgame is treated in detail in Maya society, politics, and daily life.

The Temple of Warriors

East of El Castillo is the Temple of Warriors, a long range building supported by a broad platform. The temple is approached by a single central stairway flanked by columns carved in the form of Toltec warriors, and the columns continue around the temple as a forest of stone pillars supporting a flat roof. The temple is decorated with carved serpent columns, panels of warriors and captives, and reclining Chacmool figures. The style is heavily Toltec-influenced, and the resemblance to the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Tula in central Mexico is striking.

Chichén Itzá: a Maya-Toltec capital

Chichén Itzá was the great capital of the northern Yucatán in the Terminal Classic (c. 800–1100 CE). Its style is a mix of Maya and central Mexican Toltec elements, with serpent columns, Chacmool figures, Tzompantli (skull rack) platforms, and warrior reliefs that are similar to Tula, and with stelae, hieroglyphic inscriptions, ballcourts, and sacred cenotes that are deeply Maya. Whether Chichén Itzá was a Maya city conquered by Toltecs, a Maya city with strong Toltec influence, or a local Yucatec capital with its own style, is a question that has long been debated. The issue is treated in Is Chichén Itzá Maya or Toltec?.

The Itza and the historic city

The city was the capital of the Itza, a Maya-speaking dynasty that ruled the central Yucatán for centuries. The Itza survived the fall of the southern lowlands and continued to occupy Chichén Itzá into the 15th century. They were the last independent Maya kingdom to be absorbed by Spanish colonial rule, in 1697, almost 180 years after the fall of Tayasal, the other Itza capital in the Petén.

The Spanish missionary and historian Diego de Landa, who visited the area in the 16th century, described the Itza and their great city in some detail, although he did not himself reach Chichén Itzá. Landa’s account of Maya religion, written in his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (1566), is one of the principal sources for our knowledge of pre-conquest Maya life.

Discovery and study

Chichén Itzá was first described in print by the American traveler John Lloyd Stephens and the English illustrator Frederick Catherwood in 1843. Catherwood’s detailed engravings of the stone carvings, the serpent columns, and the great pyramid brought the site to the attention of the wider world. Major excavations were carried out by Edward H. Thompson in the 1890s and 1900s, by the Carnegie Institution in the 1920s and 1930s, and by the Mexican government from the 1940s onward. The site is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a national monument of Mexico.

The popularity of El Castillo has not been without cost. The foot traffic of millions of visitors has eroded the painted stucco, and the inner pyramid has been closed to climbers for most of the modern period. A 2006 UNESCO report called for stricter conservation measures, and the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has restricted climbing in the inner pyramid to special occasions.

Why El Castillo is the most famous

The fame of El Castillo rests on a small set of facts that, taken together, make the building a near-perfect symbol of the Maya.

It is a large, beautiful, and well-preserved pyramid, set in a public plaza where it can be approached and admired from all sides.
It is a calendar in stone, with 9 levels (the 9 lords of Xibalba, the underworld), 52 panels on each face (the 52-year Calendar Round), and 365 steps (the 365 days of the haab year).
It is a solar instrument, calibrated to the equinoxes so that, twice a year, the setting sun projects a shadow in the form of a serpent down the north stairway.
It is a temple to K’uk’ulkan, the Feathered Serpent, who embodies the most universal religious idea of the pre-Columbian world. See K’uk’ulkan the Feathered Serpent.
It is set in a great Maya city, with ballcourts, palaces, columns, and the sacred cenote that gives the site its name.

No other Maya pyramid combines all of these in a single, recognizable, and accessible form. It is for these reasons that El Castillo is the most famous pyramid in the Maya world.

Sources

Miller, M. E. (1999). Maya Art and Architecture. Thames & Hudson. — link
Miller, M. E. (1986). The Murals of Bonampak. Princeton University Press. — link
Schele, L. & Freidel, D. (1990). A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya. William Morrow. — link
Houston, S. D., Stuart, D. & Taube, K. A. (2006). The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience in Ancient Mexico. University of Texas Press. — link
Taube, K. A. (2010). Maya Deities and the Place of Vision: A Workbook on Maya Iconography. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press. — link