It is located near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about 130 km (81 mi) south of Ciudad del Carmen, 150 meters (490 ft) above sea level.

[3] Palenque is a medium-sized site, smaller than Tikal, Chichen Itza, or Copán, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings that the Mayas produced.

The most famous ruler of Palenque was Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal, or Pacal the Great, whose tomb has been found and excavated in the Temple of the Inscriptions.

For instance, Kʼukʼ Bahlam I, the supposed founder of the Palenque dynasty, is called a Toktan Ajaw in the text of the Temple of the Foliated Cross.

The famous structures that we know today probably represent a rebuilding effort in response to the attacks by the city of Calakmul and its client states in 599 and 611.

[5] One of the main figures responsible for rebuilding Palenque and for a renaissance in the city's art and architecture is also one of the best-known Maya Ajaw, Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal (Pacal the Great), who ruled from 615 to 683.

[7] The work of Tatiana Proskouriakoff as well as that of Berlin, Schele, Mathews, and others, initiated the intense historical investigations that characterized much of the scholarship on the ancient Maya from the 1960s to the present.

[8] The extensive iconography and textual corpus has also allowed for study of Classic period Maya mythology[9] and ritual practice.

For unknown reasons, Akhal Moʼ Naab I had great prestige, so the kings who succeeded him were proud to be his descendants.

His sons Ahkal Moʼ Naab II and Kʼan Bʼalam I were the first kings who used the title Kinich, which means "the great sun".

In this occasion, the king of Calakmul entered Palenque in person, consolidating a significant military disaster, which was followed by an epoch of political disorder.

In this structure, is a text describing how in that epoch Palenque was newly allied with Tikal, and also with Yaxchilan, and that they were able to capture the six enemy kings of the alliance.

It is believed, therefore, that this coronation was a break in the dynastic line, and probably Kʼinich Ahkal Nab' arrived to power after years of maneuvering and forging political alliances.

[14] During the 8th century, Bʼaakal came under increasing stress, in concert with most other Classic Mayan city-states, and there was no new elite construction in the ceremonial center sometime after 800.

Important structures at Palenque include: The Temple of the Inscriptions had begun perhaps as early as 675[15] as the funerary monument of Hanab-Pakal.

The focal point of the narrative records Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal's Kʼatun period-ending rituals focused on the icons of the city's patron deities prosaically known collectively as the Palenque Triad or individually as GI, GII, and GIII.

[17] In 1952 Alberto Ruz Lhuillier removed a stone slab in the floor of the back room of the temple superstructure to reveal a passageway (filled in shortly before the city's abandonment and reopened by archeologists) leading through a long stairway to Pakal's tomb.

The much-discussed iconography of the sarcophagus lid depicts Pakal in the guise of one of the manifestations of the Maya maize god emerging from the maws of the underworld.

[19] These temples were named by early explorers; the cross-like images in two of the reliefs actually depict the tree of creation at the center of the world in Maya mythology.

The Palace, a complex of several connected and adjacent buildings and courtyards, was built by several generations on a wide artificial terrace during four century period.

The Corbel arches require a large amount of masonry mass and are limited to a small dimensional ratio of width to height providing the characteristic high ceilings and narrow passageways.

An aqueduct, constructed of great stone blocks with a three-meter-high vault, diverts the Otulum River to flow underneath the main plaza.

Del Rio's forces smashed through several walls to see what could be found, doing a fair amount of damage to the Palace, while Bernasconi made the first map of the site as well as drawing copies of a few of the bas-relief figures and sculptures.

He was the first to note that the figures depicted in Palenque's ancient art looked like the local Native Americans; some other early explorers, even years later, attributed the site to such distant peoples as Egyptians, Polynesians, or the Lost Tribes of Israel.

Starting in 1832 Jean-Frédéric Waldeck spent two years at Palenque making numerous drawings, but most of his work was not published until 1866.

It is a spring-fed conduit located on steep terrain that has a restricted outlet that would cause the water to exit forcefully, under pressure, to a height of 6 metres (20 ft).

[20] In June 2022, archaeologists from the Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced the discovery of a 1,300-year-old nine-inch-tall plaster head statue indicating a young Hun Hunahpu, the Maya's mythological maize god.

Researchers assume that the Mayan inhabitants of Palenque possibly placed a large stone statuette over a pond to represent the entrance to the underworld.

Fossils include some of the earliest representatives of modern reef fish, such as serranids (Paleoserranus), damselfish (Chaychanus), and syngnathiforms (Eekaulostomus), in addition to some of the last members of extinct groups such as pycnodontids.

This diverse ecosystem existed despite the area being relatively close to the impact site of the Chixculub meteor, which caused the extinction in the first place.