The Mayan ruins at Palenque are the very model of a "lost city". They were completely covered in jungle for hundreds of years after being abandoned around 900AD. In the 1560s the Spanish established a town nearby, named Palenque. When some Mayan descendents discovered the ruins in the late 18th century, they told the Spaniards. Soon after, in 1787, Captain del Rio was dispatched from Madrid to investigate, after Friar Ramon de Ordonez y Agular reported that indeed it appeared that the Greeks or Romans had built a city here. In the Temple of Inscriptions, Pacal, the most important ruler ("ahau") of Palenque, had recorded detailed and credible dates and names for the entire sequence of ahauob from March 431, through his rule which lasted from 615AD to 683AD. His son Chan Bahlum II ruled from 684 to 702.

Chan Bahlum II did his best to exceed his father's impressive accomplishments, by building the group of temples that includes Temple of the Cross, Temple of the Foliated Cross, and Temple of the Sun. The most impressive relief carvings are associated with Pacal and Chan Bahlum II. After 702AD, the city began to decline: the last date recorded in stone is 799AD. The site includes many structures spread over a broad area of beautiful forest, mountains, and rivers, although only the central groups are excavated.

Palenque is small compared to grander ruins like Copán, but still holds a quality in common with almost all the other sites in the area. Sitting on temple steps or walking through mazes of crumbling rooms, one can feel an energy that exists nowhere else. The word "magical" has often referred to that quality for lack of a better description, but this overused catchword is insufficient. When you visit a site, impressions of populations, commerce and activity seep into the periphery of your senses. Images rise-- plazas filled with isles of vendors sitting on mats or cloth, selling everything from pyramids of polished fruits and vegetables, mounds of herbs and medicinal remedies, baskets of beans, rice or other staples, to cooking utensils and tools. The air is slightly smoky from charcoal and wood fires and the smells of freshly cooked food, livestock, dust and crowds. There are processions of priests and politicians, incense, drums and flutes. These images always appear, like holograms.