Xculok branch road Km 10 + 200, Chuncedro, Municipality of Hopelchén, Campeche.
Access to the road at the Xculoc junction of the Merida-Chenes Federal Highway No. 261.
Stone carvings like gold filigree adorn the residences of those "who speak to the gods." The elaborate Puuc architectural style makes this ancient city a relic that remains almost entirely intact even after 12 centuries. Its greatest treasure is El Palacio.
The name of this archeological site means “trunk of the huhub trees" (Pinus caribaea) and, in common with many placenames from the peninsula, this refers to a natural element. The age of the toponym is uncertain, although another site with the same name exists in the central region of the state of Quintana Roo. The pre-Hispanic settlement of Chunhuhub was built on a series of low hills and plains of kankab (red earth), and its population began to grow in around the year 500 AD. The best-known remains date from the Late and Terminal Classic, in other words from the years 600-900-1000 AD.
Explorers John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood were the first to report the site in the mid-nineteenth century. They published their observations in 1841, and subsequently in 1843 produced a book, “Incidents of Travel in Yucatan,” with texts by Stephens and illustrations by Catherwood, who also drew many of the buildings visited in the Yucatan peninsula. Later, in 1887, Teobert Maler produced the first architectural and photographic records of Chunhuhub. In the 1930s, Harry Pollock documented the archeological site and several of its sculptures, which had been reused in the facades of houses in Xculoc, a town some three miles from the archeological site.
Luis Millet Cámara undertook the initial work to survey and restore the site of Chunhuhub in the 1980s. This was followed by a detailed study of the settlement’s layout, in a project coordinated by French archeologists Dominique Michelet and Pierre Becquelin. A few years later Renée Zapata worked on a project to restore the buildings now open to the public. In 2007, a protection area measuring just over 111 acres was created around Chunhuhub.
Chunhuhub offers numerous examples of Puuc architecture, particularly with buildings from the Junquillo and Mosaico periods (800-950 AD), noted for their use of small columns either made of single stones or with well-crafted joints, fret patterns and ashlars.
It consists of three vaulted rooms. In the frieze there are small columns and geometric motifs. This building was connected to the Palace by a stairway. Both buildings are good examples of the Puuc style and have been known since the 19th century.
It consists of two levels and 13 vaulted rooms. On its main façade there is a frieze with geometric motifs that alter sculptures resembling bats. Chunhuhub was one of the places visited by John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, who made illustrations of structures I and II.
