Temple of the Frescoes.

The Temple of the Frescoes in Tulum held significant social and religious importance; its architectural elements, frescoes, decorations, sculptures, and overall appearance indicate a place of deep reverence. The name of this building is linked to the fact that in the back room of the first floor, remnants of wall paintings in plaster remain, featuring black, green, yellow, and predominantly red colors depicting female and male deities, intertwined snakes, offerings dedicated to the gods, flowers, fruits, and corn flower spikes. The remnants of the paintings found in the Temple of the Frescoes depict schematic deities, rendered with lines over an area about 8 meters long and less than 1 meter high.

The temple is a small two-story building, with two rooms and four monolithic columns forming the entrance openings on the first floor. It also has three niches with a descending figure of a god in the center and two standing figures on either side. On the exterior, relief stucco figures are visible: large stone faces at the corners of the frieze (mascarons), sculptures, one of which depicts the Descending God and human figures. At the corners of the frieze, large stucco masks can be seen, which possibly represent the god Itzamna, the creator of the world and writing, founder of the priesthood, patron of the Maya rulers, and lord of the sky; this god imparted his knowledge to people. Catholic missionaries often likened him to God the Father. The upper tier of the temple is decorated with red handprints.

Of all the buildings in Tulum, the Temple of the Frescoes has preserved the most decorative elements. In style, these paintings are very close to the pictorial manuscripts of the Mixtec Indians from the mountainous Oaxaca region (10th–16th centuries), but in content, they are purely Mayan. Various Maya gods are represented here: the rain god Chaac holding a ruler’s scepter, female deities performing complex rituals among bean sprouts, the sky and wisdom god Itzamna, and various animals. In one of the frescoes, Chaac is depicted sitting astride a four-legged beast of considerable size. Considering the obvious unusualness of this motif for all pre-Columbian iconography of Mexico and Central America, it can be assumed that the Maya living at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries on the eastern coast of the Yucatan had already seen or, more likely, heard about the Spanish horsemen who were sowing terror and death in those years on the islands of the West Indies (Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica).

The second floor is a small sanctuary decorated with red handprints. The exterior of the temple features three protruding horizontal bands, and above the door is a niche with a figure of the descending god.

The temple was constructed in several stages: the first stage involved building a chamber with an altar, frescoes on the facade, and an entrance decorated with a human figure with a bowed head. The second stage consisted of a gallery with entrances formed by several columns adorned with plaster figures. Later, part of the gallery was filled with stone to serve as a foundation for the upper temple.

Sources:

https://4stor.ru/strashno-interesno/102101-tulum-gorod-rassveta.html

https://mayanpeninsula.com/templo-frescos-tulum-estructura-16/

https://pueblosoriginarios.com/meso/maya/sitios/tulum.html