You can see what I mean in the following picture; there's the Templo de la Cruz to the right, the Templo del Sol to the left, and the smallish temple in between was apparently too small for a full-blown name, so he only got a number: Templo XV.
On the next picture, showing again the Templo de la Cruz, you can see very nicely how they excavated/restored only half of it: the front side with the steps leading to up to the inner sanctum. The back wasn't important enough, it seems.
While the temples in Palenque weren't as high as those in Tikal, the decorations and inscriptions on and in the temples were much better preserved. The one in the next picture is located inside Templo XV (if I remember correctly), and it shows (again, if I remember correctly) a certain deceased ruler and his deceased mother in the underworld - having a party, maybe?
The interesting thing is that the the two columns of symbols on the right and left sides are Mayan script, and this script tells the story of the ruler and his mum, along with the dates of their birth/death/rule/etc. This is the fascinating thing about the Maya: there is no guesswork necessary as to the important dates and names - they can simply be read from the inscriptions! For example, there is one inscription that tells of the time when the ruler of Tikal came to visit. Just imagine - pretty much the same information you could find in European history books.
This is Palenque's palace, the home of the ruling class and site of crowning ceremonies and the like. It is not entirely clear what the tower in the middle was built for - stargazing, maybe? - but it was unique in the Maya world.
The items found inside temples and burial sites are displayed in the museum located just off the archaeological site. I'm not quite sure what kind of an object the exhibit in the next picture was - I'm guessing another incense burner - but what you can see very clearly is how the blue coloring somehow, amazingly, survived the centuries and gives us an impression of how colorful all Maya objects and structures may have been in their heyday.
Another highlight of Palenque was the Temple of the Inscriptions, named for the three rows of writing that were found on its top.
It seems the temple had been built for the sole purpose of housing famous ruler Pakal's sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is displayed inside the museum. It was made out of a huge stone slab and carved with great detail, recounting Pakal's history and lineage:
