Why go
Use the Great Plaza, ballcourt and connecting causeways to see an ancient city as an organized social setting. Architecture could carry sculpted images and writing, while building and plastering monumental stonework required coordinated labor and specialist craft. Notice how each space supports a different kind of gathering.
The full story
Maya cities contained pyramid temples, palaces, ballcourts, patios and plazas, often joined by raised causeways called sacbeob. Some cities also had water systems or defensive walls. Exterior walls could be painted in one or several colors and decorated with sculpted or painted plaster relief. The pale stone visible today therefore gives an incomplete sense of their original appearance. Monumental building required quarrying, transporting and finishing stone, as well as making and applying limestone plaster. An estimate for one elite residence at Copán assigns most labor to stonework and a substantial share to plaster, illustrating the scale of skilled coordination, though the figure is not a direct measure for Chichen Itza. Temples and palaces were more than isolated objects: plazas gave people room to gather, ballcourts staged public ritual, and monuments could record dynastic deeds. At Chichen Itza, compare the mass of El Castillo with the lower platforms and the long walls of the Great Ballcourt to understand these different roles.