It is rare to find mural work in the ruin sites. A lot of it has been carted off far and wide and is only available to view in museum settings, separated from its place of creation. For some pieces this has been a good way to exist – under the watchful eyes of museum curators and living within temperature controlled rooms. Otherwise their survival may not have happened.

One of the hard things to do when traveling through archaeological sites is imagining the artwork that was there. In Tulum, The Temple of the Frescoes has one example of how the internal rooms and galleries of the buildings may have been decorated. While many of the murals found were painted hundreds and hundreds of years ago, on this particular mural, of which this photo is only a partial view, is evidence that it was still being painted after the Spaniards made themselves present in the area.

Here fragments of color can be seen on murals depicting Maya life. Amongst the frescoes is a portrayal of a man on a horse, which indicates that these drawings were still being worked on after the Spanish invasion. (The horse was introduced by the Spanish and clearly had a disarming effect on the Mayans – originally it was thought that horse and rider were one being and later, when one of Cortés’ horses died, its skeleton was worshiped as a god). — from differentworld.com

I took this photograph on my second sweep of the Tulum ruins. I have no idea how I missed it the first time, but I’m glad I went back and re-studied the site.

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