Tikal

Tikal is in Guatemala, a country in Central America.

Long ago, the Maya people built a big city here. They made tall temples and wide open squares. Now the city is surrounded by forest.

Tikal lies in the Petén region of northern Guatemala, inside a huge forest that stretches into Mexico and Belize, sometimes called the Maya Forest. Long ago it was one of the most important cities of the ancient Maya.

In its center are temples, palaces and plazas, open squares reached by ramps, and the remains of homes are scattered through the forest around them. Tikal is now a national park, and in 1979 it became a World Heritage Site, both for its ruins and for the animals and plants of its forest.

Tikal National Park covers 57,600 hectares of wetlands, savanna and tropical broadleaf and palm forest in Petén, embedded in the more than two-million-hectare Maya Biosphere Reserve. UNESCO describes Tikal as a major Pre-Columbian political, economic and military centre and one of the most important archaeological complexes of the Maya civilization.

An inner urban zone of about 400 hectares holds the main monumental architecture: palaces, temples, ceremonial platforms, residences, ball courts, terraces, roads and squares. A wider zone of about 1,200 hectares covers residential areas and ancient water reservoirs, and more than 25 secondary sites lie in the outer zone. Tikal is one of the few World Heritage properties inscribed under both cultural and natural criteria.

In the middle of the city is a big grassy square.

A tall temple stands beside it. It has steep steps and a little room on top. Carved stones stand on the grass.

The heart of Tikal is the Great Plaza. Two temple pyramids stand on it, Temple I and Temple II, built at the same time. Temple I, the tall temple in the photo, has steep stepped sides, one long staircase and a small room near the top, with its roof comb above.

Beside the plaza is the North Acropolis, a huge mound with 16 temples on it. In the photo, upright carved stone slabs called stelae stand on the grass. Elsewhere in the city are ball courts, a market and more temple groups, such as the Lost World complex.

The Great Plaza is framed by Temples I and II, which the Penn Museum describes as built at the same time, by the North Acropolis, a mound bearing 16 temples, and by the Central Acropolis. The tall temple in the photo, with its stacked terraces, single front stair, top shrine and roof comb, matches the form of Temple I; at the Penn Museum's 1/100 scale model it stands 44.5 cm high.

UNESCO singles out the Great Plaza, the Lost World complex, the Twin Pyramid complexes, the ball courts and the irrigation structures as exceptional ensembles. The photo shows upright carved slabs, stelae, standing on the plaza; monuments like these carry the hieroglyphic records of Tikal's dynastic history. The East Plaza, also excavated by the Penn Museum, held ball courts and a marketplace.

Today, visitors walk across the Great Plaza.

They look up at the tall temples. Park rangers and scientists work to keep the old stones and the forest safe.

Tikal became a national monument in 1931 and a national park in 1955, one of Guatemala's first protected areas. Today visitors walk across the Great Plaza, as the people in the photo are doing.

Keeping Tikal safe is hard work. The wet, tropical weather wears away the stones, plants grow over them, and some people have stolen carvings. UNESCO's summary noted visitors in the hundreds of thousands a year, and the waste and wear they bring must be carefully managed too.

Declared a national monument in 1931 and a national park in 1955, Tikal is managed by an administrator and technical team covering archaeology, nature conservation, education, community relations and public use. UNESCO's summary identifies weathering in a wet tropical climate, vegetation growth, looting, villages and farmland closing in near the park's southern border, and mass tourism (annual visitors in the hundreds of thousands at the time of the summary) as the main pressures, and it notes that past large restorations of the main complexes reduced the remains' authenticity to some degree.

It recommends conservation that keeps original materials and techniques and avoids large restoration projects, and suggests extending the protected area to cover nearby forest and archaeological remains outside today's boundaries.