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Tulum sits on the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo in southeastern Mexico, about 130 kilometres south of Cancún. Its original Maya name may have been Zama, meaning "dawn" or "morning" — appropriate for a city facing east over the sea toward the sunrise; "Tulum," meaning "wall" or "fence" in Yucatec Maya, is a later name describing its most distinctive feature. It was one of the few Maya cities to be enclosed by a defensive wall: a thick limestone rampart, 3 to 5 metres high and up to 8 metres thick, ran around the landward three sides of the settlement, while the cliff and sea protected the fourth.
Unlike the great Classic-period Maya cities of the interior, which had largely collapsed by 900 CE, Tulum belongs to the Postclassic period and reached its height between roughly 1200 and 1521 CE. It functioned as a major node in the maritime and overland trade networks of the Maya world, exchanging goods such as obsidian, jade, cacao, copper, salt, and textiles along the coast and into Central America. The buildings are smaller and more austere than the soaring pyramids of Tikal or Palenque, reflecting both the late date and the city's mercantile rather than monumental-ceremonial character.
The dominant structure is El Castillo ("the castle"), a stepped pyramid built on the very edge of the 12-metre cliff, which may have served as a navigational beacon, guiding canoes through a gap in the offshore barrier reef. Other significant buildings include the Temple of the Frescoes, which preserves murals depicting Maya deities in a distinctive coastal "East Coast" style, and the Temple of the Descending God, named for the inverted winged figure carved above its doorway. The murals and architecture show stylistic links to the Mixteca-Puebla tradition of central Mexico, indicating Tulum's connections far beyond the Maya region.
Tulum was first recorded by Europeans in 1518, when the Spanish expedition of Juan de Grijalva sailed past and the chronicler Juan Díaz compared its size to the city of Seville. The city survived into the colonial period but was eventually abandoned as Old World diseases devastated the indigenous population. It was documented in detail by the explorers John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood in 1841, whose published accounts and engravings brought it to international attention.