Mexico: Thirteen Attractions and Natural Wonders

A country of civilisations layered on civilisations

Mexico stretches from the US border to Central America, home to about 130 million people and one of the deepest, most continuously inhabited cultural histories in the Americas — Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, and Aztec civilisations built cities here that rivalled anything in Europe at the time, and Spanish colonisation from 1521 layered baroque churches and silver-mining towns on top. It has more UNESCO World Heritage Sites than almost any country, two long coastlines, deserts, cloud forest, and some of the world's best food.

The thirteen below run from the Yucatán through the capital and colonial heartland to the Pacific and the north. The dry season (roughly November to April) is generally the most comfortable; the Yucatán and Pacific coasts are hot and humid year-round, and hurricane risk runs June to November on both coasts.

1. Chichén Itzá

Chichén Itzá, one of the "New Seven Wonders of the World", was a major Maya political and religious centre from around the 7th to 13th centuries — its step pyramid El Castillo built with precise astronomical alignment, alongside a huge ball court, an observatory, and a sacred cenote used for offerings. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Mexico's most-visited archaeological site.

Go at opening to beat both the heat and the crowds; climbing the pyramid itself is no longer permitted.

2. Tulum

Tulum, on the Riviera Maya, is a smaller, later Maya trading port, unusual for sitting right on a cliff above a white-sand Caribbean beach — the combination that makes it Mexico's most photographed ruin. Below the site, the beach and a laid-back town of boutique hotels and beach clubs have made Tulum one of the country's most fashionable destinations.

It is popular enough that arriving early is worth it for both the ruins and the beach.

3. The cenotes of the Yucatán

The Yucatán Peninsula's limestone bedrock is riddled with cenotes — sinkholes and collapsed caves exposing crystal-clear groundwater, some open to the sky, some deep underground caverns reached by ladder. Sacred to the Maya as portals to the underworld, they are now popular for swimming, snorkelling, and technical cave diving; Ik Kil, near Chichén Itzá, is among the most visited, with hundreds more scattered across the region.

Many cenotes are on private or community land with a modest entry fee; life jackets are often required.

4. Mexico City

Mexico City, one of the largest metropolitan areas on earth, was built over the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, whose ruins (Templo Mayor) sit beside the Zócalo and its colonial cathedral. Beyond the historic centre are the murals of Diego Rivera at the National Palace, the world-class National Museum of Anthropology, the canals of Xochimilco, and neighbourhoods like Roma and Condesa with some of Latin America's best restaurants.

Altitude (over 2,200 metres) can affect visitors for the first day or two.

5. The Frida Kahlo Museum

In the cobbled southern borough of Coyoacán, the cobalt-blue house where Frida Kahlo was born, lived with Diego Rivera, and died in 1954 is now a museum of her personal effects, art, and the walled garden central to her work — one of Mexico City's most visited sites, and best booked online ahead for a timed entry. Coyoacán's own plaza and market are worth the trip on their own.

It combines well with the nearby Anahuacalli Museum, another Rivera project.

6. Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán, an hour from Mexico City, was one of the largest cities in the ancient world — home to perhaps 125,000 people at its height around AD 400 — though the identity of its builders remains debated. Its Avenue of the Dead runs between the Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon, with sunrise hot-air balloon flights over the whole site a popular (pricier) alternative to walking it.

It is one of the most rewarding easy day trips from the capital.

7. Oaxaca and Monte Albán

Oaxaca city is widely considered Mexico's food and craft capital — mezcal distilleries, mole sauces, a superb covered market, and elaborate Day of the Dead altars each November. Above it, Monte Albán was the capital of the Zapotec civilisation for over a thousand years, its plazas and ball courts carved out of a deliberately flattened mountaintop with sweeping valley views. Both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The surrounding valley also holds the vast Tule tree (one of the widest trees on earth) and weaving villages like Teotitlán del Valle.

8. San Miguel de Allende

San Miguel de Allende, in the colonial highlands, is a beautifully preserved 16th-century silver-trade town, its cobbled streets and pink-spired parish church now home to a large expatriate community, art galleries, and cooking schools. It was a hotbed of independence-era plotting (the city is named for a local hero of the war), and its September independence celebrations are among the country's most passionate.

9. Guanajuato

Guanajuato, once one of the richest silver-mining cities on earth, is built into a ravine so tightly that many of its streets run through tunnels originally dug for flood control — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of brightly painted houses, plazas, and the famous narrow Alley of the Kiss. It hosts the Cervantino, one of Latin America's largest arts festivals, each October.

Its student population (home to a major university) keeps it lively year-round.

10. Palenque

Palenque, in the jungle-covered hills of Chiapas, is smaller than Chichén Itzá but rated by many as more beautiful for its setting — temples and a palace complex rising out of dense rainforest, with streams running through the site and howler monkeys audible in the canopy. The tomb of the ruler Pakal, discovered inside the Temple of the Inscriptions, was one of the great finds of Maya archaeology.

It is remote, usually combined with the waterfalls of Agua Azul and Misol-Ha nearby.

11. Copper Canyon

Copper Canyon, in the northern Sierra Madre, is actually a network of canyons with a combined area and depth greater than the Grand Canyon, home to the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) people, renowned long-distance runners. The Chepe railway, one of the great train journeys of the Americas, crosses 37 bridges and 86 tunnels through the canyon system between Los Mochis and Chihuahua.

It rewards several days — a single train ride only skims the surface.

12. The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve

Each winter, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies complete a multi- generational migration from Canada and the northern US to a small area of oyamel fir forest in the mountains of Michoacán and the State of Mexico, where they cluster so densely the branches bend under their weight. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, open to visitors roughly from November to March, with community-run sanctuaries at El Rosario and Sierra Chincua.

Reaching the colonies means a horseback or walking climb at altitude; mornings, once the sun warms the butterflies into flight, are the most spectacular.

13. Los Cabos

At the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, Los Cabos pairs the resort towns of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo with El Arco, a natural rock arch where the Pacific meets the Sea of Cortez. The surrounding waters are rich with marine life — whale watching (grey and humpback whales, roughly December to April), sport fishing, and snorkelling — and the desert-and-ocean landscape is quite different from Mexico's Caribbean coast.

It has its own international airport, making it a self-contained beach trip distinct from the Yucatán resorts.

Mexico rewards picking a region: the Yucatán and Riviera Maya for ruins and beaches, the central colonial highlands (Mexico City, Oaxaca, San Miguel, Guanajuato) for culture, or Baja and the Pacific coast for a different kind of trip. Two weeks lets you combine two of these comfortably.