Acropolis

15.2683°N, 89.0411°W.

The Acropolis at Quiriguá in the Motagua Valley of southeastern Guatemala is the elevated palace and temple complex that anchors the south end of the city's Great Plaza. The acropolis was built up in stages between approximately 550 and 850 CE during the Late Classic, of cut sandstone over rubble fill, rising 12 metres above the plaza floor and supporting a sequence of vaulted residential ranges and small temple-pyramids. The complex served as the seat of the Quiriguá ajaw lineage during the city's eighth-century apogee under K'ahk' Tiliw Chan Yopaat and Sky Xul. Quiriguá's wealth derived from controlling the jade and obsidian trade flowing down the Motagua River from the highlands. The site was excavated by the Carnegie Institution beginning in 1910 and consolidated by the University of Pennsylvania Quiriguá Project in the 1970s.

The Acropolis is a stone hill built by the same dynasty that put the largest carved stela in the Maya world in the plaza below it.