Temple of the Sculpted Panels

Why go

This low temple is easy to pass when moving between larger southern monuments. Slow down for the sculpted panels that give it its name and compare their close-scale detail with El Caracol's silhouette. It suits a visitor interested in carving rather than another monumental skyline.

What to look for

• Carved panels identify the low southern temple
• Its scale contrasts with nearby El Caracol

The full story

The first phase was a platform about 17 by 12 meters carrying a temple with two rooms in parallel. Its front room formed a portico with two columns, while a central opening led to the room behind. Later builders added a colonnade across the platform's full width. They removed the first stair and moved the approach forward, using a new stair to reach the colonnade roof level and then the upper part of the earlier stair. A small vaulted passage ran beneath the new stair in front of the hall. Its side walls were strengthened again in a subsequent phase. On the short walls of the added colonnade, two slightly recessed panels depicted scenes with numerous people in coarse stone relief. Fine modeled stucco and paint originally finished the images, so the surviving stone was only the underlayer of a more detailed surface. This sequence explains the layered mass without suggesting that the ancient stairs or passage form a current visitor path.

Useful to know

• View from the public visitor path; do not climb or enter protected structures.

Your next visit

Estimated · Declared scenario and planning estimates; no live opening, weather, queue or booking service.