17.1330°N, 91.2500°W.
Piedras Negras is a major Classic Maya city on the south bank of the Usumacinta River in Peten, Guatemala, opposite Yaxchilan downstream. The city flourished from approximately 400 to 810 CE under a documented dynasty of fourteen rulers whose reigns were systematically reconstructed by Tatiana Proskouriakoff in her landmark 1960 paper that demonstrated, for the first time, that Maya inscriptions recorded historical events and named individual kings. The architecture is built of limestone and includes the Acropolis palace complex, a series of plazas with paired pyramids, and an extensive sweat-bath group of nine bath houses — the largest such concentration known from the Maya world. The site's stelae and lintels carry exceptionally well-preserved relief portraits of accession ceremonies and warfare. Teobert Maler photographed and described the city for the Peabody Museum in 1899. The Ruler 7 lintel and the carved benches of Throne 1 are landmarks of Classic Maya political art.
The Acropolis still rises above the river bank in successive limestone terraces.