Mask Temple, Lamanai, Belize

A stone face about four meters tall stares out from the base of the Mask Temple at Lamanai, a Maya city on a lagoon in northern Belize. Carved around 500 to 550 CE, it shows how Maya pyramids were dressed: huge masks of rulers or gods framed the stairways, though few survive this well. Lamanai itself outlasted almost every Maya city in this gallery, still occupied when Spanish friars visited in 1618.