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| Roatan | Copan | Utila | Bay Islands | La Ceiba | Trujillo | Tela | Omoa | San Pedro Sula |
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town of Copán Ruinas, in ancient times known as Oxwitik, traces
its foundations to the Mayas. By the time of the Spanish conquest of Honduras,
the town's site had long been overgrown by rainforest, but since the rediscovery
of the nearby ruins it has grown and prospered. By the 00s the modern town of Copán Ruinas, with about 6,000 inhabitants, has become a growing tourist center for activities beyond the Mayan ruins. Coffee and cardamom plantations, hiking and horseback riding trails, white water rivers and caves dot the surrounding area. With around 1,400 hotel beds, since 2003 the town hosts an annual October conference on tourism. With its cobble stone streets, and multiethnic restaurants Copán Ruinas is halfway between Guatemala and Honduras. The town caters to the budget backpacker and to sophisticated travelers looking for a bit of pampering and an authentic experience. Copán Ruinas offers a bit to both. It's a place to slow down, get away from the Mayan tourist trail, or experience a bit of exotic adventure. |
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Macaw
Mountain Bird Park: Dozen of rescued and donated parrots, macaws, toucans make their aviary on this river side park. Sip a cappuccino while listening to a guided tour included in your ticket. (M-Su: 9am-5pm/ 651-4245) Miramundo
Coffee Finca: Kasa Kinich:
Regional Archeological
Museum: San Jose Aurel
Church: Hot Springs: El Cuartel: Butterfly and
Orchid Garden: Finca El Cisne:
Hiking: Horseback riding:
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fertile Copán River valley was long a site of agriculture
before the first known stone architecture was built. Copán is the
southern most of all the major Mayan sites. Copán, capital to the
Xukpi (Corner-Bundle) state, began about 200 AD with the construction of
the Great Plaza, ball court, and Acropolis. By 5th Century AD it grew into
one of the most important Maya cities. Large monuments dated with hieroglyhic texts were erected in the city between 420s and 850s, when Copán was ruled by a single dynastic lineage of 16 kings. Ceramic offerings indicate these rulers was closely allied with Teotihuacán, the great urban center in the Valley of Mexico. Xukpi was one of the more powerful Maya city states, but it eventually declined due to drought and depletion of natural resources- a factor in bringing down most of the Maya city-states. Copán's population peaked at around 20,000 declining to 5,000 by 9th century AD. The ceremonial center was abandoned and by the time of Spanish conquest only hamlets dotted the valley. Ruins of ancient Copán cover about 12 acres in a 12 kilometer long river valley. Copán is recognized to have one of the best hieroglyphic inscriptions and sculpted monuments in the Maya world. It features a remarkable series of portrait stelae, most of which were placed along processional rute in the central plaza and acropolis. The stelae and sculptured decorations of the buildings of Copán are some of the very finest surviving art of ancient Mesoamerica. Many structures are elaborately decorated with stone sculptures, usually constructed from a mosaic of carved stones of a size that one person could carry. The volcanic stone construction material used at the site, makes it one of the most well-preserved classic Maya sites. At its height in the late classic period Copán seems to have had an unusually prosperous class of minor nobility, scribes, artisans, some of whom had homes of cut stone built for themselves, some with carved hieroglyphic texts. The buildings suffered significantly from forces of nature in the centuries between the site's abandonment and the rediscovery of the ruins. There have been numerous earthquakes and the hieroglyphic stairway had collapsed. The Copán river changed course and meandered, destroying part of the acropolis, yet revealing the site's topography in a large vertical cut. The mudslide destroyed various subsidiary architectural groups. Although the site of the ruined city was known locally since early colonial times, it remained largely unknown by the outside world until a series of explorers visited Copán in the early 19th century. Juan Galindo wrote a description of the ruins in 1834 that sparked the interest of North American explorer and travel writer John Lloyd Stephens and an English architect and draftsman Frederick Catherwood who published an illustrated books describing Copán igniting even more interest in Mesoamerican antiquities among American and European scholars. In 1881 English explorer Alfred Maudslay visited the ruins and obtained a permits for exploratory work. His effort produced the area's first topographic map, photographs, plaster casts and drawings of the site that can be viewed at the British Museum in London. Between 1891 and 1900 the first modern archeological surveys and excavations in the Maya area were conducted by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University. The ruins were the site of extensive research and restoration from the 1930s to 1950s done by Carnegie Institution, the Peabody Museum and beginning in 1970, the Government of Honduras's Proyecto Copán. After 1975, the decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphs allowed investigators to read many of the inscriptions at the site and to reconstruct Copán's dynastic history. In 1980 UNESCO declared Copán a world heritage. |
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