Photo: Arian Zwegers from Brussels, Belgium (CC BY 2.0)
A self-guided audio tour of the ceremonial centre of Mayapán, the walled city from which the Cocom lineage ruled much of north-western Yucatán from about the 1220s to the 1450s. At its centre is the Castillo of Kukulcán, a smaller but close copy of the temple at Chichén Itzá, built beside Cenote Ch'en Mul, where a stalagmite from the cave beneath gave a record of drought between about 1400 and 1450. Around them: the Hall of the Kings, the Hall of the Frescoes and its painted solar discs, the Hall of the Chaak Masks, the Round Temple, the Dance Platform, the Temple of the Painted Niches with its five painted temple façades, and on the Northeast Plaza the Temple of the Warriors and the Temple of the Fisherman, with its mural of a water scene. The tour tells how the city's government ended violently in the mid-fifteenth century, when the Xiu revolted against the Cocom and the city was sacked and burned. Its wall, about nine kilometres long, enclosed thousands of houses.
10 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 2 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 1 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Temple of the Fisherman, Temple of the Painted Niches, Temple of the Warriors.
The Dance Platform, The Castillo of Kukulcán, Hall of the Frescoes, Round Temple.
Hall of the Chaak Masks, Hall of the Kings, Cenote Ch'en Mul.
A mural of a headless, richly dressed man with fish and a bound lizard or crocodile.
A mural of five temple façades resting on open-mouthed serpent heads, in blue, red and yellow.
Mayapán's highest building, nine tiers and about 18 metres high, with stucco warrior figures whose heads are missing.
Mural fragments of descending figures inside yellow solar discs, on a red ground with a green border.
The sinkhole beside the Castillo, whose cave yielded a drought record tied to the city's rising conflict before its collapse.
A colonnaded hall beside the Castillo, named for the stucco feet and faces found on its columns.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 10 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 10 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Mayapán — the Last Maya Capital of Yucatán, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
10 narration points, including Temple of the Fisherman, Temple of the Painted Niches, The Castillo of Kukulcán, Round Temple and Hall of the Chaak Masks. That is about 11 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1½ hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 10 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.