Nan Madol Architecture

Nan Madol architecture is the megalithic building tradition of the Saudeleur dynasty on the Micronesian island of Pohnpei, whose distinctive monumental construction began around 1180 to 1200 AD atop an earlier settlement whose islet construction had started by the eighth or ninth century. Its builders raised roughly ninety two artificial islets, stone and coral fill platforms bordered by tidal canals, across a core area of about one and a half by half a kilometer; the name Nan Madol itself means within the intervals, referring to this network of waterways. Its defining structural material is columnar basalt, quarried from a volcanic plug on the far side of Pohnpei and stacked into massive walls, most dramatically at the royal mortuary islet of Nandauwas, where walls between five and a half and seven and a half meters high enclose the tomb built for the dynasty's first ruler.