Temple of K'uk'ulkan

The Temple of K'uk'ulkan is the great step pyramid at Chichen Itza in the northern Yucatan lowlands, raised to the Maya Feathered Serpent deity K'uk'ulkan. An inner temple was built between about 600 and 800, and the pyramid took its final form around the ninth to eleventh centuries.

Stairways climb all four sides; each has ninety-one steps, and counting the top platform they add up to three hundred and sixty-five, the days of the Maya solar year. At the equinoxes the setting sun casts shadows that seem to make a serpent crawl down the northern balustrade.

Chichen Itza had declined as a regional power by 1100, and colonial Maya chronicles credit Hunac Ceel of Mayapan with its conquest in the thirteenth century, yet pilgrims still came to its cenote. Spaniards under Montejo the Younger briefly held the ruins in 1532 and 1534 before being driven out.