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like Guatemala’s Tikal or Mexico’s Chichen Itza, yet it has been The Honduran government now owns Copan and wisely
called “the Athens of the New World.” At its peak around 550 built a museum at the site to house the original sculptures
AD, the city was home to some 20,000 residents and served and stelae (carved pillars) uncovered by archeologists. Like
as a cultural center with stunning architecture and unparalleled many visitors, I was disappointed to realize I was admiring and
artwork. Few explorers found their way to Copan until the 1839 photographing replicas of the artwork as I wandered around
arrival of famed Maya scholar and author John Lloyd Stephens the ruins. Then I walked through a tunnel-like entryway into
and artist Frederich Catherwood. Stephens was so impressed the modern Museum of Mayan Sculpture beside the ruins,
he supposedly bought the entire archeological site from a lo- and faced a full-scale model of a buried temple, its carvings
cal campesino for $50. covered in red, yellow and green paint. I’d grown accustomed
to admiring Mayan art and architecture in its stripped-down

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