Copán and Quiriguá, the Maya cities of the south

The Maya world is usually pictured as pyramids rising above the rainforest, and Tikal, in the far north of Guatemala, fits the picture perfectly. In the south-east of the country and just across the border in Honduras are two cities that are rather different. They are smaller and lower, set in green river valleys rather than deep jungle, and their glory is not their height but their sculpture. Copán and Quiriguá have the finest carved monuments of the Maya world, and the story of their relationship is one of the best documented in Maya history, because the Maya wrote it down.

Copán, the Athens of the Maya

Copán lies in a fertile valley in western Honduras, a few kilometres from the Guatemalan border. For several centuries in the first millennium AD it was one of the great Maya cities, ruled by a dynasty of sixteen kings whose line can be traced from its founder in the early fifth century to its last ruler around the start of the ninth.

Its stelae, the tall carved stone slabs set up in its plazas, are carved in deep, almost three-dimensional relief, with kings in elaborate headdresses and costumes and their sides covered in hieroglyphic text. They are among the most accomplished works of Maya sculpture anywhere, and they are one reason Copán is sometimes called the Athens of the Maya world.

The most famous monument is the Hieroglyphic Stairway, a flight of steps on one of the temples whose risers carry thousands of carved glyphs, the longest known Maya inscription. It records the history of the dynasty. When it was found, the stairway had partly collapsed and many of the blocks had been scattered, so that the text can only be partly read.

Copán also has one of the best ball courts of the Maya world, and a small museum where a full-size replica of a brightly painted temple, found intact beneath a later building, shows what Maya architecture looked like before its colours weathered away.

Quiriguá, and the king who captured his master

For much of its history, Quiriguá, in the lowlands of the Motagua valley in Guatemala, seems to have been under Copán's control. Its rulers were installed with Copán's backing. Then, in the eighth century, the relationship broke dramatically. The ruler of Quiriguá, known as K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat, captured the king of Copán, Waxaklajuun Ub'aah K'awiil, often called Eighteen Rabbit, and had him executed, in 738 according to the inscriptions.

Quiriguá's fortunes rose as a result, and its king marked his victory in the way Maya rulers did, with monuments. The stelae of Quiriguá are the tallest the Maya ever raised. The largest, Stela E, stands more than seven metres above the ground, a single slab of sandstone carved with the king's portrait and with long inscriptions. Alongside the stelae are the zoomorphs, great boulders carved into fantastic composite creatures covered in figures and glyphs.

The site is small, set in a grove of trees surrounded by banana plantations, and it rarely feels busy. Standing beside the stelae, with their columns of glyphs recording the capture of a king, is about as direct a connection to Maya history as there is.

Travelling to the south-east

The two sites are often visited together, crossing the border between Guatemala and Honduras at a land crossing a short drive from Copán. They fit naturally into a longer journey through Guatemala that takes in Tikal, the Caribbean coast and the highlands.

Explore Worldwide's Guatemala: Land of the Maya, fourteen nights, does exactly this. It starts in Guatemala City and travels to Copán and Quiriguá, then to the Caribbean coast at Puerto Barrios and Livingston and up the Río Dulce, before heading north to Flores and Tikal. It returns south through Sayaxché, the Candelaria Caves, Cobán and Lanquín. Its departures are in October and November and from January to March.

Explore's Contrasts of Mexico, fourteen nights, comes at the Maya world from the north. It travels through central and southern Mexico, Oaxaca, the Sumidero Canyon and the Chiapas highlands around San Cristóbal de las Casas, and continues into Guatemala and Belize.

The south-east of Guatemala is hot and humid at low altitude, and the dry season, from about November to April, is the most comfortable time to visit. Copán's town, a small place of cobbled streets and red-tiled roofs, is pleasant enough to stay a night, which gives time to see the ruins early, before the heat, with the scarlet macaws that nest around the site calling overhead.