Why go
Read the ruins as a city that remained active long after many better-known Classic Maya centers changed or declined. Land and sea routes met here, and the wall framed a ceremonial and governing core. The repeated image of a descending figure links several buildings, but its exact meaning remains debated.
The full story
The city flourished during the Late Postclassic period, broadly from about 1200 until Spanish contact in the sixteenth century. A carved stela bears a much earlier date, AD 564, but researchers have suggested that it may have been brought from elsewhere and reused. That date should not be taken as the founding year of the buildings visible today. Tulum's east-facing coastal position supported movement by canoe as well as over land. Its wall enclosed the monumental center, while people also lived beyond the enclosure. Spanish expedition members saw the settlement in 1518. By the end of that century, it had been abandoned, although the causes cannot be reduced to a single event. In the nineteenth century, John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood described and drew its buildings, including El Castillo. Their view from the sea is a useful reminder that the waterfront was once an approach to the city, not simply a backdrop for photographs.