Nine Things About Xunantunich That Are Not in the Guidebook
The frieze is a copy, the name is a ghost story, and the ball court does not exist.
In this guide
- 1. The frieze is a replica
- 2. Gann took Altar 1's glyphs and nobody knows where they are
- 3. A royal tomb sat undiscovered for 120 years
- 4. Two of the carved panels were made in a rival city
- 5. The name is a nineteenth-century ghost story
- 6. It was the first Maya site in Belize opened to the public
- 7. There is no ball court
- 8. The rulers walled themselves in on the way down
- 9. The cave tubing is ninety minutes away
Nine things about Xunantunich that are true, verifiable, and mostly absent from the tour listings.
1. The frieze is a replica
The band of moulded stucco below El Castillo's upper temple is the most photographed object at Xunantunich. It is a reproduction. The originals are sealed underneath it.
The Getty Conservation Institute did the work between 1992 and 1996, because weather was destroying the real thing faster than it could be recorded. Nobody hides this — but nobody tells you either, and there is no sign at the top of the pyramid that does.
The frieze once wrapped all four sides of the roof panel. Fragments survive east and west. The east face carries a World Tree, a sun god, the moon and Venus, with Chaac probably at the centre. What you photograph is an honest copy of something you are standing on top of.
2. Gann took Altar 1's glyphs and nobody knows where they are
Thomas Gann ran the first excavation here in 1894–95. He came back in 1924 and removed burial goods along with the carved glyphs from Altar 1.
Their whereabouts are still unknown. A century later, that text is simply gone.
Not destroyed, not eroded, not undeciphered — removed, and then lost track of. Whatever Altar 1 said, it said it to Gann and to nobody since.
3. A royal tomb sat undiscovered for 120 years
In 2016, Jaime Awe's team opened a chamber in Structure A-9 and found the largest royal tomb discovered in Belize in over a century: an adult male aged 20–30, 36 ceramic vessels, a jade necklace, 14 obsidian blades, and deer or jaguar remains.
Now the list of people who dug at Xunantunich before 2016 and did not find it: Gann (1894–95, 1924), Maler (1904), Thompson (1938), Satterthwaite (1950), MacKie (1959–60), Leventhal and Ashmore (1991–97), Awe himself (2000–04).
And the tomb is architecturally odd on top of that: the temple appears to have been built around the burial, not the burial inserted into a finished temple. The building exists because the body does.
4. Two of the carved panels were made in a rival city
Panels 3 and 4 came from a ceremonial staircase at Caracol, commissioned in 642 CE — dismantled there, re-erected here.
Their text, deciphered by Christophe Helmke, records the Snake-head dynasty's move from Dzibanche to Calakmul: one of the defining political events of the Classic Maya world, written on stones that are now standing in someone else's plaza. Panel 3 carries a death statement for Lady Batz' Ek', who died in 638 CE.
Tribute or loot. The stones do not say which.
Nobody knows what the Maya called this city. Every name it has ever had in writing is somebody else's.
5. The name is a nineteenth-century ghost story
Nobody knows what the Maya called this city. "Xunantunich" is modern — Yucatec/Mopan Maya, attached in the nineteenth century, meaning "Stone Woman" or "Maiden of the Rock".
It comes from a story: a woman in white appearing at the foot of El Castillo, and vanishing into the stone. The most famous Maya site in western Belize is named after a ghost that a villager reported.
It is pronounced shoo-nan-too-nich.
6. It was the first Maya site in Belize opened to the public
1954. Before Caracol, before Cahal Pech, before Altun Ha. Everything about visiting Xunantunich today — the ferry, the mile of road, the ticket booth, the visitor centre — descends from that decision.
Seventy-plus years of visitors, and the tomb still went unfound until 2016.
7. There is no ball court
Ball courts are close to universal at Maya centres of this size, which is presumably why two tour listings claim Xunantunich has one.
It does not. NICH's own site map board — the one standing at the entrance — shows Plazas A-I, A-II and A-III, Groups B, C and D, and no ball court anywhere.
Two listings agreeing is not two sources. It is one piece of marketing copy, copied. The official body wins.
8. The rulers walled themselves in on the way down
Structures A-1 and A-13 were built only in the ninth century — the very end of occupation, as the Classic order collapsed across the Maya world. Together they close Plaza A-II off from Plaza A-I.
The reading archaeologists give is uncomfortable and specific: a ruling family physically separating itself from everyone else, at exactly the moment its authority was failing. Meanwhile El Castillo's upper levels went up in two phases, around 800 and 900 — and the later phase buried most of the earlier frieze. A city spending its last century building over its own best work and shutting the gates.
If a listing mentions a ball court, treat the rest of its site description with the same caution — that claim did not come from anyone who checked.
9. The cave tubing is ninety minutes away
Most tours sold as "Xunantunich and cave tubing" are two destinations, not one. The tubing happens at Nohoch Che'en Caves Branch — about ninety minutes' drive from the ruins. Some operators brand it "Jaguar Paw" or "Caves Branch"; same reserve. A few Hopkins tours use St. Herman's Cave instead.
That drive is the whole reason a combo runs nine to eleven hours instead of three, and why time at the pyramid drops from three hours to one. It is not a scam — it is a good activity, somewhere else, and the listings rarely make the geography obvious.
Now go and look at it properly
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