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The El Pilar Archaeological Reserve, San Ignacio is one of the popular places for Sightseeing in San Ignacio. The San Ignacio town is the capital of the Cayo District. It is located in the west of the country. The district is the largest in the country. The El Pilar Archaeological Reserve, San Ignacio is one of the main Tourist Attractions in San Ignacio.

This San Ignacio Attraction is located 12 miles north of San Ignacio, astride the Belize-Guatemala border. El Pilar is situated on a ridge land escarpment which extends from Guatemala's Peten into Belize, north of the Belize River valley. In the 1970’s this reserve was recorded by Belize's Department of Archaeology. In 1984 a map of the site was made by the Belize River Archaeological Settlement Survey (BRASS). In 1993 the first full-scale investigation of El Pilar was begun. The excavation of the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve in San Ignacio is carried out by The BRASS/El Pilar Program which is an international, multi-disciplinary project headed by Dr. Anabel Ford of the University of California Santa Barbara.

The nine square kilometer reserve was designated as Belize's newest national park in May 1997. Guatemala also made it a protected reserve in 1998. The World Monument Fund has included the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve, San Ignacio in the list of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the World. The list also includes sites such as Pompeii, the Taj Mahal and Ankor Wat. After research based on ceramic comparisons, it has been concluded that the monumental constructions at El Pilar dates back to the Middle Pre-classic (500 B.C.) The construction continued till the Terminal Classic (1000 A.D.) period.

The El Pilar Archaeological Reserve, San Ignacio features twenty-five identified plazas in an area of 100 acres. This site is the largest center in the Belize River area, and is more than three times the size of other well-known sites like Baking Pot or Xunantunich. There are more than a dozen large pyramids. The whole site is divided into three sectors namely Nohol (South) Pilar, Xaman (North) Pilar and Pilar Poniente (West). Visitors can walk through these site and plazas which are still not cleared. Travelers can also enter an underground corbeled tunnel and a standing temple. Apart from these attractions the site is also home to hundreds of species of birds and animals.

So visit the El Pilar Archaeological Reserve, San Ignacio to know more about Belize’s culture.

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Tourist Attractions in San Ignacio
Caracol	Cahal Pech
El Pilar Archaeological Reserve	Western Belize Caves
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Xunantunich