Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. It had about 100 residents at the height of its use in the 1200s.

Cliff Palace was constructed by the Ancestral Puebloans, sometimes called the Anasazi. The Ancestral Puebloans were native to the Four Corners region of the United States, where the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona neatly intersect. Cliff Palace is part of a much larger village, Mesa Verde, in what is now Colorado.

The 150 rooms of Cliff Palace were constructed out of natural sandstone, wooden beams, and mortar made of soil, water, and ash. Tiny pieces of stone called chinking are also embedded in the mortar, to strengthen construction.

Ancestral Puebloans entered their cliff-dwelling apartments through wooden ladders. (The ones in this beautiful photograph were reconstructed by the National Park Service.) Rooms in Cliff Palace were about 2 by 2.5 meters (6 by 8 feet). Families lived together, and historians say that two to three people probably shared a room. Many rooms were originally plastered in bright colors—usually pink, brown, red, yellow, or white.

Smaller rooms near the back of the cliff were used for storing crops, such as beans, corn, and squash.

Kivas are the large, round rooms with sunken floors in front of the square dwelling spaces. Kivas were used for rituals and ceremonies, although archaeologists and anthropologists are not sure how. Each clan or family probably had their own kiva in front of their dwelling and storage space.