Pyramid of the Magician

The Pyramid of the Magician rises over the Maya city of Uxmal in the Puuc hills of Yucatán, and it does not look like any other pyramid in Mesoamerica. Its base is not square but elliptical, roughly 69 by 49 metres, so that its flanks curve softly instead of meeting at sharp corners, and its height is usually given at around 35 metres, though estimates range from under 28 to 40. Seen from the great quadrangle beside it, the rounded mass seems to swell out of the ground.

The shape is the record of a long life. Archaeologists have found five temples nested one inside another, built in stages over some three centuries from about the sixth century AD into the tenth. The earlier phases follow the restrained Puuc manner of the region, with plain lower walls and intricate stone mosaic above; a later temple facing west is in the Chenes style, its doorway framed by a single enormous mask of a creature so that the entrance becomes the open mouth of the god. The steep western stairway is aligned to face the setting sun at the summer solstice. Uxmal as a whole, inscribed by UNESCO in 1996, is counted among the summits of late Maya art and architecture.

The name comes from a story rather than from any record. Local Maya tradition tells of a dwarf, hatched from an egg by an old woman, who was challenged by the king of Uxmal and raised the whole pyramid in a single night, which is how a temple-pyramid came to be named after a magician. Today the pyramid is admired from below rather than climbed, which suits it: the curving silhouette is best appreciated from a distance across the city's plazas, standing out pale against the green scrub of the hills.

Getting there

Uxmal lies in the hills south of Mérida, about 25 km from the town of Ticul. The nearest airport is Mérida's Manuel Crescencio Rejón International (MID), about 64 km away. Most visitors come by car or on an organised trip from Mérida.