Cliff Palace

Cliff Palace fills a long sandstone alcove high in a canyon wall on the Mesa Verde plateau of south-western Colorado, and from the rim opposite it looks like a small town tucked under a stone brim. Towers, multi-storey room blocks and low walls step up and back into the shadow of the overhang, all built of shaped sandstone laid in mortar of local soil, water and ash, with tiny stone chips — chinking — pressed into the joints. It is the largest cliff dwelling in North America: about 150 rooms and 23 kivas, more than double the size of any other in the park.

The Ancestral Puebloans built it in roughly the thirteenth century and had left it by around 1300. Around a hundred people are thought to have lived here, but the unusually high number of kivas — the round, sunken chambers used for ceremony and gatherings — suggests Cliff Palace was more than a home: probably a social, administrative and ceremonial centre for the communities of the mesa. Look for traces of earthen plaster on the walls, once coloured pink, brown, red, yellow or white, and for the small doorways, sized for people who averaged around five foot four for men and five foot for women.

Of the roughly six hundred cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, three quarters have only between one and five rooms, which makes the scale here all the more striking. The site was brought to wide attention in December 1888, when two local ranchers, Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason, spotted it while looking for stray cattle. Years of digging for artefacts followed and did serious damage; systematic excavation began under Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian after Mesa Verde became a national park in 1906.

The best way to feel the place is to go down into it: ranger-led visits descend a century-old sandstone stair and climb out by ladders, about a quarter of a mile in all, and bring you close enough to see fingerprints of the builders' craft in the stonework.

Getting there

Cliff Palace is on Chapin Mesa in Mesa Verde National Park. The park entrance is on US Highway 160 between Cortez and Mancos, about 35 miles west of Durango; from the entrance a steep, winding road climbs about 21 miles (around 45 minutes) to the Chapin Mesa area. The nearest airport is Cortez Municipal Airport (CEZ), about 20 km away; Durango and Farmington, New Mexico — about 54 km from the site as the crow flies — also have airports. A car is needed to get around the park.