Nan Madol
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Radiocarbon dates show Nan Madol is older than the stone city of Leluh on Kosrae, reversing the local tradition that Kosrae's builders came to Pohnpei.
- Despite its size, the city probably never had more than about a thousand residents, and perhaps fewer than five hundred.
- From Nan Madol the Saudeleur rulers governed an island population estimated at around 25,000 people.
- Food for the Saudeleur ruler was delivered to one particular islet, first Peiniot and later the closer Usennamw.
- Its original name is said to have been Soun Nan-leng, usually translated as "Reef of Heaven".
- Accounts disagree on how many Saudeleur rulers there were, with numbers ranging from eight to seventeen.
- Pohnpeian tradition speaks of two sunken cities offshore; divers searched for them, but the supposed stone pillars proved to be made entirely of coral.
- A blue hole off the ruins, once linked to a legendary drowned city, turned out to be a natural sinkhole formed when sea levels were low during the ice ages.
- The ruins inspired the setting of A. Merritt's 1918 lost-world novel The Moon Pool.
- Because of its canals, Nan Madol is often nicknamed the "Venice of the Pacific".
Why it is worth it
On a reef flat off the eastern shore of Pohnpei, dozens of walled islets rise out of shallow water, separated by channels that fill and drain with the tide. Their walls are built from long, many-sided columns of natural basalt, and around the royal tombs they rise higher than a two-storey house. This is Nan Madol, the political and ceremonial heart of the Saudeleur dynasty, which brought all of Pohnpei under a single rule. The core of the site covers roughly 1.5 by 0.5 kilometres and holds 92 artificial islets of stone and coral fill, while the wider protected district extends over more than 18 square kilometres along the coast of Temwen Island.
People were active here from around the first or second century AD. Islet building had begun by the eighth or ninth century, and the monumental basalt architecture dates from about 1180–1200. The stone was brought from a volcanic plug on the far side of the island. The complex had two parts: Madol Powe, the northeastern sector of 58 islets reserved for priests and the dead, and an administrative quarter where the nobility lived. Its most imposing islet is Nandauwas, the royal mortuary, where walls between 5.5 and 7.5 metres high enclose a central tomb built for the first Saudeleur ruler. Other islets had practical roles: one for building canoes, another for preparing coconut oil. With no fresh water or farmland on the islets, everything had to be ferried in from Pohnpei. Gathering rival chiefs inside the city also let the rulers keep watch over them.
Pohnpeian tradition tells that twin sorcerers, Olisihpa and Olosohpa, came by canoe from a distant western land to raise an altar to the god of agriculture, and that they lifted the great stones into place with the help of a flying dragon. Olosohpa, the story continues, became the first Saudeleur. Saudeleur rule ended around 1628, when the invader Isokelekel overthrew the dynasty. His successors lived at Nan Madol for a time but later abandoned it. The Polish ethnographer John Kubary wrote the first detailed description of the ruins in 1874. The name is usually translated as "within the intervals", after the canals that run between the islets. In 2016 UNESCO inscribed the site as a World Heritage Site under the name "Nan Madol: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia".
Getting there
Nan Madol lies off the east coast of Pohnpei, in the Madolenihmw district of Pohnpei State, Federated States of Micronesia. Palikir, the national capital, is about 21 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Pohnpei International Airport (PNI), roughly 21 km away, near Kolonia on the island's north coast; a road runs around the island to the Temwen area.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Nan Madol is an archaeological site adjacent to the eastern shore of the island of Pohnpei, now part of the Madolenihmw district of Pohnpei state in the Federated States of Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean. Nan Madol was the capital of the Saudeleur dynasty until about 1628. The city, constructed in a lagoon, consists of a series of small artificial islands linked by a network of canals. The site core with its stone walls encloses an area approximately 1.5 by 0.5 kilometres and it contains 92 artificial islets—stone and coral fill platforms—bordered by tidal canals.
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