The mayan culture is undoubtedly one of Mexico's richest, and one of the best-known thorughout the world. Each day its majestic architecture attracts thousands of visitors who come to Yucatan and Guatemala to be part of the enigma that sorrounds each one of these buildings.

While Europe still slumbered in the midst of the Dark Ages, these innovative people had charted the heavens, evolved the only true writing system native to the Americas and were masters of mathematics and calendrics. Without advantage of metal tools, beasts of burden or even the wheel they were able to construct vast cities with an astonishing degree of architectural perfection and variety. Their legacy in stone, which has survived in a spectacular fashion at places such as Palenque, Tikal, Tulum, Chichén Itzá, Copán and Uxmal, lives on as do the seven million descendants of the classic Maya civilization.

During the Early Classical period (200 to 600 AD), Mayan civilization developed steadily. Tikal was the principal center at this time. After a period of some sixty years, during which the construction of monuments slowed down or came to a standstill, Mayan civilization reached its apogee; this was the Late Classical period (600 to 800 AD).

Cities multiplied; some which had been abandoned were reoccupied; others were created, and those already existing were expanded. The population of the Mayan region increased, and regional variations gained ground, so that Tikal lost its supremacy.

As a consequence, it seems that political power in the southern lowlands was divided among various city-states. each of the most important, such as Tikal, Calakmul, Palenque and Copán, controlled a region, delegating power in some secondary centers, which nonetheless remained under their control. This partition of power, maintained through political and matrimonial alliances, proved fragile.

Mayan cities were formed of one of more main quarters, consisting of temples erected on high pyramidal bases, and large voulted buildings -the residences of the aristocracy and administrative and religious centers-. These buildings, arranged on top of an acropolis or distributed around a central plaza, were sorrounded by groups of smaller constructions and humbler dwellings.