Río Bec

Maya site in southern Campeche — not Petén, despite how it is often billed — that gave its name to an entire architectural style. The Río Bec façade is architecture built as illusion. Two solid masonry towers flank a long range building; the stairways up their faces are a motif rather than stairs, too steep to climb and leading nowhere; the temples on top are solid masses with no rooms inside; the doorways are niches cut to look like doors. The towers narrow as they rise to fake greater height. The style appears in the 7th century and runs into the early 12th, spreading to neighbouring sites and sitting close to the Chenes style to its northwest. Teoberto Maler mentioned the place at the end of the 19th century without ever going there; Maurice de Périgny was the first European to reach and report it, and it was effectively lost again until 1912. A CNRS team under Dominique Michelet has been mapping and excavating the groups since the 2000s. Much of it remains unrestored, which is most of its appeal.

18.3793°, -89.3585°

Walkthrough videos (1)

We explored a LOST MAYA CITY in the jungle of Peten | Ruins of Rio Bec · The ARX Project

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