Structure A

17.1800°N, 89.3600°W.

Structure A is one of the principal pyramids at Nakum in the Petén Basin of northern Guatemala, located 15 km north of Yaxhá along the same Holmul watershed. The pyramid was built between approximately 250 and 850 CE during the Classic period, of cut limestone faced with stucco, rising about 18 metres above the plaza floor. Nakum is unusual among Petén Maya cities for its preservation of standing palace architecture — multi-room ranges with intact corbelled vaults and exterior friezes still in place. The site was first reported by Maurice de Périgny in 1905, surveyed by Alfred Tozzer for Harvard's Peabody Museum, and systematically excavated by the Polish-Guatemalan Nakum Archaeological Project under Jaroslaw Źrałka beginning in 2006. Structure A anchors the site's southern sector. Structure A is a pyramid in a city where the surrounding palace walls are still standing more than a thousand years after the roofs fell in.

Among Petén sites, Nakum's standing architecture is the closest you can get to seeing what these cities looked like before the canopy ate them.