Guayabo National Monument, Archaeological site in Turrialba Canton, Costa Rica.
Guayabo National Monument is an archaeological complex of low stone-and-earth terraces on a grassy hillside below Turrialba Volcano. Circular and rectangular platforms with gray stone retaining walls, a broad paved ramp, stepped tiers, and wooden-railed paths lie among trees. Excavations have revealed 43 stone foundations, aqueducts, tombs, and petroglyphs, including a monolith carved with a jaguar on one side and a lizard on the other.
The first inhabitants settled here around a thousand years before the common era and developed a complex settlement system over centuries. The community reached its greatest extent around the year eight hundred of the common era before people left the place in the fifteenth century.
The site takes its name from the guayabo tree and still shows the round stone platforms where wooden houses with palm-thatch roofs once stood. Visitors can walk along the old paved paths and see water flowing through carved channels and canals that have crossed the grounds for centuries.
The monument sits on Turrialba Volcano and opens daily until mid-afternoon, with different entry costs for locals and international guests. Sturdy shoes are recommended for the trails since the terrain is uneven and some sections pass through wooded areas.
In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers named Guayabo an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, citing its roads, walls and water channels as achievements of a pre-Columbian civilization. The paved road starting in front of Mound 1 once linked settlements up to 9 km away.
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