Mayapán, the archaeological site, was a Mayan city of the post-classic period. It is located in the northwest of the state of Yucatan, in the municipality of Tecoh, about 40 kilometers away from the city of Mérida, the state capital. With the defeat of the Itzá group in Chichen Itzá and with its elimination in the control of Izamal and Hunac Ceel, the Itza of Mayapán gain control of northern Yucatán and govern it from 1200 to 1450 AD. C. The population reached, in its time of greater apogee, a population of 12,000 inhabitants, according to archaeological estimations. It was founded by the cocom group, whom the experts associate with the bearers of what has been called Maya-Toltec culture.
Mayapán was the seat of the Mayapán League, a confederation that brought together the caciques of Uxmal and Chichén Itzá. The disputes over the control of the confederation ended with the defeat of the Itzá who ruled Chichén, and their flight to the Peten, where they founded the city of Tayasal. The hegemony of the league was exerted from that moment by the cocomes of Mayapán, although with strong opposition of the inhabitants of the other Mayan kingdoms of the peninsula. The League of Mayapán seems to have been dissolved around the year 1440, when the Cocomes left the square and settled in Sotuta. The city of Mayapán was built in the likeness of Chichen Itza. Its main buildings are a copy of the capital of the Itza.
The constructive style incorporated elements of the architecture of central Mexico, combined with traits inherited from the ancient Mayan cities. However, with the fall of Chichén Itzá, Mayapán was to develop a style of its own geared towards the reworking of ancient forms. The main building of Mayapán is called Castillo dedicated to the god Kukulcán, and it is a pyramidal base with nine bodies and a height of fifteen meters. Many platforms are part of the archaeological zone. Recent discoveries and rediscovery of vestiges of mural painting in Mayapán, places this Mayan city among the main exponents of this art in northern Yucatan. This situation was little expected by the specialists, by virtue of the historical destruction of the city, as well as the deterioration of normal caused by the environment and man.
In general terms, Mayapán's murals reflect to a large extent the interrelations of this ancient Mayan city with other Late Postclassic Mesoamerican groups that participated in this network of long-distance exchanges. An example of this can be found in the pictorial vestiges of Structure Q, where the mural painting motifs depicted have symbolic affinities with the Codex Nutall and the Borgia Codex, as well as with the Late Postclassic art of Central Mexico. Since 1990 the project Prehispanic mural painting in Mexico of the Institute of Aesthetic Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is dedicated to the recording and study of pre-Columbian murals, such as those of Mayapán.