El Castillo - Chichen Itza

Gordon Nicolson

From a series of photographs of pre-Columbian ruins by Gordon Nicholson.

Chichen Itza is a site located on the northern center of the Yucatan Peninsula. The site exhibits a multitiude of architectural styles, remniscent of styles seen in central Mexico and of the Puuc and Chenes styles of the northern Maya lowlands.

El Castillo is a Mesoamerican step-pyramid that dominates the center of the Chichen Itza archaeological site in the Mexican state of Yucatan. The pyramid consists of a series of square terraces with stairways up each of the four sides to the temple on top. Sculptures of plumed serpents run down the sides of the northern balustrade. During the spring and autumn equionoxes, the late afternoon sun strikes off the northern corner of the pyramid and casts a series of triangular shadows against the northwest balustrade, creating the illusion of a feathered serpent crawling down the pyramid.

Each face of the pyramid has a stairway with 91 steps, which together with the shared step at the top, add up to 365, the number of days in a year. Climbing El Castillo is no longer allowed after a tourist fell to her death in 2006.