Jaguar Temple (N10-9)

17.7531°N, 88.6547°W.

The Jaguar Temple, also designated Structure N10-9, sits on the central plaza of Lamanai on the New River Lagoon in northern Belize. The pyramid was constructed in the Early Classic around 500 CE and underwent significant remodeling in the Postclassic between 1200 and 1400 CE — making it one of the few Maya temples in active modification when the Classic Maya collapse was supposed to have ended construction across the region. The pyramid's name comes from large stylized jaguar masks, badly eroded but still visible, that flank the lower terraces. Lamanai's Postclassic activity included pottery production, copper tool manufacture, and continuous ritual use of the older monumental core. David Pendergast's Royal Ontario Museum project excavated the structure in the 1970s, documenting both the Early Classic core and the Postclassic modifications. The Lamanai community continued occupying the surrounding precinct under Spanish colonial administration after 1544, when Franciscan missionaries built a church on the site.

The Jaguar Temple is a building people kept renovating for centuries after the encyclopedia entry says they had stopped building.