Long before the Spanish conquistadors set foot in the jungles of the Yucatán Peninsula, a remarkable civilization flourished on a small island in the middle of Lake Petén Itzá in what is now northern Guatemala. This settlement, known to its inhabitants as Nojpetén — meaning "great island" in the Itza Maya language — had its earliest archaeological roots stretching back to somewhere between 900 and 600 BC. It would endure for more than two millennia, surviving the collapse of the broader Maya classical world, the chaos of the post-classic era, and the relentless pressure of Spanish colonialism, before finally falling in 1697 as the last independent Maya kingdom on earth.
The name Nojpetén itself comes from the Itza words noj peten, while the more widely known designation Tayasal appears to derive from a Hispanicization of the Itza phrase ta itza, meaning "at the place of the Itza." This latter name was used by the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo in his memoirs, written many years after his travels across Petén. When the Itza king Kan Ek' spoke directly to Spanish representatives in 1698, he referred to the city by its proper name, Nojpetén. The island on which the city stood is today occupied by the modern town of Flores, the departmental capital of Petén, which has maintained continuous human occupation since pre-Columbian times.
The founding tradition recorded in ethnohistoric documents places the establishment of Nojpetén in the mid-fifteenth century AD, specifically around 1441 to 1446. According to this account, the Itza people were driven southward from the great city of Mayapan after being deposed by the Xiu Maya, seeking refuge and a new stronghold in the remote lake country far from the power centers of the Yucatán. When they settled on the island, they organized their new capital according to a quadripartite system, dividing it into four quarters based on lineage groups. This fourfold division appears to have been embedded into the urban fabric so thoroughly that the modern street plan of Flores still reflects it, with principal streets running north-south and east-west intersecting at the island's summit — the same location now occupied by the town plaza and its Catholic church.
At its height, Nojpetén was a densely packed urban center. Approximately 2,000 people lived within its roughly 200 houses, alongside temples, palaces, and thatched residential structures. By 1698, Spanish accounts described the city as having twenty-one temples. The most impressive of these, which the Spanish referred to as a castillo, stood on a square base measuring 16.5 meters on each side. Its nine stepped levels rose to a flat-roofed summit shrine containing the idols of Itza deities, and it faced northward. Observers noted a striking similarity in design to the great pyramids at Chichen Itza and Mayapan in Yucatán, though Nojpetén's castillo was approximately half the size of the Mayapan example. The pyramid may have had only a single access stairway rather than the four radial stairways characteristic of its Yucatecan counterparts. Throughout the city, ritual ceramics identified by the Spanish as idols were arranged in pairs on small benches, a pattern of sacred organization that reflected the continuing vitality of Itza religious practice.
The settlement's defensive posture in its final years was evident from the construction of walls along the low ground of the island, which archaeologists and historians believe were hastily built in response to threats from either the encroaching Spanish or rival Maya groups. When the Spanish Franciscan missionary Andrés de Avendaño y Loyola visited Nojpetén in early 1696, he found a city still bearing the scars of a recent Kowoj Maya attack, during which nine of its twenty-one temples had been burned and subsequently rebuilt. The attack had also destroyed many houses. The city had recovered, but the vulnerability of its position was apparent.
The final Spanish assault came in the early months of 1697. Martín de Ursúa y Arismendi reached the western shore of Lake Petén Itzá in February of that year, commanding a force of 235 Spanish soldiers and 120 native laborers. He had constructed a large oar-powered attack boat capable of crossing the lake and engaging the island's defenses directly. On 10 March 1697, Ursúa launched his assault. The Spanish bombardment of Nojpetén caused severe casualties among the Itza defenders, who were ultimately forced to abandon the city and retreat from the island. The last Maya kingdom had fallen.
The Spanish immediately set about reshaping the conquered city. The pagan idols throughout Nojpetén were destroyed, and the settlement was given a new name: Nuestra Señora de los Remedios y San Pablo, Laguna del Itza — Our Lady of Remedy and Saint Paul, Lake of the Itza. In colonial documents it was often shortened simply to Remedios, or referred to as Petén or El Presidio, the garrison. The great pyramid at the center of the city, despite its imposing size, appears to have been dismantled at some point; Spanish records make no direct mention of this demolition, which would have required considerable effort.
The settlement continued under Spanish colonial rule and then under Guatemalan governance after independence. In 1831 the government renamed it Flores, in honor of Cirilo Flores, a Guatemalan head of state. The island's long continuity of occupation — unbroken from pre-Columbian times through conquest, colonialism, and republican government — makes it one of the most enduring inhabited sites in the Americas. Today the town of Flores preserves, in its very layout, a ghost of the Itza capital that once stood at the center of the last independent Maya world.
