High Temple (N10-43)

17.7525°N, 88.6544°W.

The High Temple, also designated Structure N10-43, is the tallest pyramid at Lamanai on the New River Lagoon in northern Belize. Originally constructed in the Late Preclassic around 100 BCE, the pyramid was modified repeatedly through the Classic Period and reached its visible 33-metre profile by approximately 700 CE. Lamanai is one of the longest continuously occupied Maya cities, with confirmed habitation from circa 1500 BCE through the seventeenth-century arrival of Spanish Franciscan missionaries. The High Temple is faced with cut limestone and originally bore stucco masks at the basal terraces. The site was systematically excavated by David Pendergast for the Royal Ontario Museum from 1974 to 1986. From the summit, the New River Lagoon loops 270 degrees around the pyramid's base, providing a natural defensive ring. Lamanai's continuous occupation through the Postclassic and into the colonial period makes it one of the most chronologically deep Maya sites known.

The High Temple is a building still standing on a city that did not collapse with the Classic Maya — it kept going.