# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Uxmal

There are five principal buildings or groups—the Temple of the Magician, Nunnery Quadrangle, House of the Turtles, House of the Pigeons and Governor's Palace. There are other structures and groups, smaller and more dilapidated. One of them, standing immediately S. of the Nunnery, consists of two parallel walls only: it is usually described as the ball-court, or gymnasium, a structure common to most Maya cities. The Temple of the Magician crowns an unusually steep pyramid 240 ${\displaystyle \times }$ 180 ft. at the base and 80 ft. high. It has three rooms, and a smaller temple is built against the upper western side of the pyramid. A broad steep stairway ascends to the summit platform on the E., and a narrower stairway to the lower temple on the W. The west front is filled with remarkable figures and designs, including the lattice work common in Uxmal. The Nunnery Quadrangle consists of four large rectangular independent buildings, enclosing a quadrangular court, the whole occupying a terrace over 300 ft. square at the base and upwards of 15 ft. above the level of the plain. The buildings resemble each other in the arrangement of their rooms, and their elaborately ornamented facades face inwards upon the court. The division of the buildings into numerous small rooms is understood to signify that they were used as communal habitations, possibly of priestly orders. The Governor's Palace, standing upon a triple terrace S. of the Nunnery, is, according to W. H. Holmes, “ the most important single structure of its class in Yucatan, and for that matter in America." It is 320 ft. long, 40 ft. wide and 25 or 26 ft. high, divided into a long central and two end sections, separated by recesses and two transverse archways about 25 ft. long, 10 ft. wide and 20 ft. high. These archways were subsequently blocked, and may have been intended originally as portals to a quadrangle which was never built. The upper zone of the exterior walls is about 10 ft. wide, exclusive of the mouldings and ornamental frieze, and its total length of 720 ft. is crowded with sculptures, in which there are three principal motives—the mask, the fret and the lattice. The projecting snouts in the line of masks forming the upper part of this zone are a peculiar feature of Uxmal ornamentation. The House of the Turtles is a comparatively small structure near the N.W. corner of the Governor's Palace. It has the same features found in the other structures except for a line of sculptured turtles on the mouldings of the frieze. Immediately S.W. of the Governor's Palace is a huge truncated pyramid, 200 ${\displaystyle \times }$ 300 ft. at the base and 60 to 70 ft. high. Beyond this is another large quadrangular group known as the House of the Pigeons. It resembles the Nunnery Quadrangle, except that the northern building carries a peculiar roof-comb of colossal size, running its entire length and rising to a height of about 16 ft. The base of this comb is 4 t. high, capped by a moulding and perforated by over 50 openings. Above this the comb is divided into nine sections rising by large ste s to the apex, each pierced by 30 or more openings, like an immense dbvecote. Projecting stones suggest that they were built to carry statues or figures like the roof-combs of Palenque.