08/08/2026
🗿Xunantunich🗿features 6 distinct civic plazas, more than 26 temples, residential structures, and elite administrative palaces covering a core area of more than a full square mile.
It served as a Maya civic ceremonial centre of the Belize Valley region in the Late and Terminal Classic periods (c.700–900 AD). At that time, when the region was at its peak, nearly 200,000 people lived in the Belize Valley - a population Belize did not regain again until the early 1990s.
Xunantunich means "Maiden of the Rock" and refers to the ghost of a woman claimed by several people to inhabit the site, beginning in 1892.
A highlight here is "El Castillo", the second tallest structure in Belize (after the temple at Caracol), at some 130 feet (40 m) tall. The pyramid lies underneath a series of terraces and fine stucco or "friezes".
