Chichen Itza — The Sacred City

El Castillo pyramid has 365 steps — one for each day of the solar year. The Ball Court is the largest in Mesoamerica, with acoustics so precise that a whisper at one end can be heard clearly at the other. The Sacred Cenote received offerings — gold, jade, incense, and human sacrifice — from pilgrims who traveled thousands of miles to reach it. Chichen Itza was the political, religious, and commercial capital of the northern Maya lowlands for four centuries, and its ruins are so complete and so massive that they still dominate the jungle a thousand years after the city was abandoned. The Maya built for eternity. They were right to.

These signs carry El Castillo in full equinox glory, the Ball Court, the Cenote, and the city that proved the Maya understood both time and stone.