Labná, Municipality of Oxkutzcab, Yucatán.
From the city of Mérida, take Federal Highway 261 Mérida-Campeche, pass the towns of Muna and Santa Elena and follow the turn off to Emiliano Zapata, better known as the Puuc Route.
Although this is a small city, it houses three jewels: its beautiful Arch of richly carved stone; the Palace, whose facade has numerous masks of the god Chaac, and the Mirador (lookout point). It was declared a World Heritage Site together with Uxmal, Sayil and Xlapak, under the title of the Pre-Hispanic Town of Uxmal.
Although this is a small city, it houses three jewels: its beautiful Arch of richly carved stone; the Palace, whose facade has numerous masks of the god Chaac, and the Mirador (lookout point). It was declared a World Heritage Site together with Uxmal, Sayil and Xlapak, under the title of the Pre-Hispanic Town of Uxmal.
Labná was a medium-sized sister city of Oxkintok and Nohpat, probably owing its allegiance to a regional capital of the Puuc region, possibly to Uxmal, Sayil or Kabah. Nevertheless the city had extraordinarily elaborate architecture which is largely still preserved. The site was populated from 200 BC, reaching its apogee between 800 and 1000 AD. Labná undoubtedly had a complex social structure and its style and decorative elements are similar to other cities of the region. In 1842 the US explorer John Lloyd Stephens and the English architect and photographer Frederick Catherwood visited the area, the latter taking some valuable images of the monuments of the ancient city.
At Labná, the profusely decorated ten foot wide by twenty foot high arch is exceptional, as are the monuments known as El Palacio ("The Palace") (two floors, with masks of the god known as "Narigudo"), and El Mirador ("The Lookout"), which is a temple on top of a pyramid. The city extended to 1.4 square miles and was home to a population of 3,000. It is listed as a World Heritage Site, under the collective title of the “Pre-Hispanic Town of Uxmal.”
Here we can see the beginnings of the Puuc style, marked by smooth facades and, in this case, by its high cresting with modeled stucco decoration. It is a pyramidal building whose shape cannot be determined exactly because of the degree of destruction in which it is found.
It is one of the most monumental-looking constructions in this area because of its new solution, the imposing proportions and the strength of its reliefs.
On the highest point of the valley is located El Palacio, a group of at least seven buildings that are distributed on two levels and went through different stages of construction. The earliest stages are located on the highest part of the hill and do not belong to Puuc architecture.
In front of the pyramid there is a square patio, limited by constructions of which only piles of stone remain, with a small mound in the center; the constructions on the western side form, in turn, part of another quadrangular patio.
A royal residence in continual construction
