Rosalila (violet pink) is the name given to one of the most amazing structures found at Copan. It was so sacred to the ancient Maya that it was given the highest honors for burial. This seems strange, as it is burying a building we are talking about! When the next building was going to be built over for the new ruler the temple was given its own burial offering at the time construction started on the following structure, the stucco was carefully protected and after centuries we may say it was saved for posterity... It is situated at the center of Structure 10L- 16 or simply Structure 16. You will be able to see a reproduction of Rosalila in full splendor at the Copan Sculpture Museum. This temples façade has given great insight into the general appearance of buildings during this period at Copan and how the city must have looked. The crests on other buildings haven't survived to our days due to the destruction carried out by the Maya themselves, as when buildings fell into disuse they were defaced and mostly used as construction material for new construction phases. Due to the passage of time, climatic factors, erosion and looting other builidings have been lost as well. But Rosalila teaches us a special lesson about the techniques the Maya used to make their buildings as tall as possible with the limited resources available to them, which often included destroying the previous building to put a new one on top. This is evident when seeing the different construction phases at different structures throughout Copan, but in the case of Rosalila there are five temples that were built earlier. Each construction phase is given a color name, with Rosalila being the third construction phase from the bottom up.

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