The site in Copan is perhaps best known for producing a remarkable series of portrait stelae, most of which were placed along processional ways in the central plaza of the city and the adjoining "acropolis" (a large complex of overlapping step-pyramids, plazas, and palaces). The stelae and sculptured decorations of the buildings of Copán are some of the very finest surviving art of ancient Mesoamerica.

Many structures are elaborately decorated with stone sculptures, usually constructed from a mosaic of carved stones of a size that one person could carry.

The site also has a large court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame.

At its height in the late classic period Copán seems to have had an unusually prosperous class of minor nobility, scribes, and artisans, some of whom had homes of cut stone built for themselves (in most sites a privilege reserved for the rulers and high priests), some of which have carved hieroglyphic texts.
The buildings suffered significantly from forces of nature in the centuries between the site's abandonment and the rediscovery of the ruins. There have been numerous earthquakes -- none of the roofs of the stone buildings were intact when the site was rediscovered, and the hieroglyphic stairway had collapsed. The Copán river changed course and meandered, destroying part of the acropolis (revealing in the process its stratigraphy in a large vertical cut) and apparently wiping out various subsidiary architectural groups in the region. In the long period when the site was overgrown the buildings and sculptures suffered from the invasive thick jungle vegetation and periodic forest fires.

Archeologists have consolidated and restored many structures at the site.

List of known Xukpi rulers
प्राचीन इतिहास
खण्डहर वर्णन
Copán in modern times