Temple of the Murals

16.7024°N, 91.0647°W.

The Temple of the Murals at Bonampak in the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, is a small three-room pyramid temple whose interior preserves the most complete pre-Columbian wall paintings ever recovered in the Maya world. Built around 790 CE under the ruler Yajaw Chan Muwaan II, the temple's three chambers are painted floor to ceiling with continuous narrative scenes: a courtly procession with musicians in Room 1, a graphic battle and the torture of captives in Room 2, and a victory dance in Room 3. The murals were rediscovered in 1946 by American photographer Giles Healey, guided by local Lacandon Maya. The pigments — Maya blue, ochre, hematite — preserved through 1,200 years of jungle humidity by a thin natural calcium carbonate film deposited by groundwater seeping through the limestone roof.

The Temple of the Murals is a building whose interior paintings were preserved by the same water that should have destroyed them.