Xel-Há Ruins

Five groups of buildings, linked by raised white roads, make up what remains of a walled Maya port that traded up and down this coast for well over a thousand years and served the inland city of Cobá. The oldest and largest group, the Palace, stands on a natural rise. Nearby, Las Pilastras keeps the eight columns of a ruler's palace.

Inside the half-ruined House of the Birds, murals of local birds survive alongside a figure read as Tláloc, the rain god of central Mexico. The Jaguar Group, five small temples on a platform beside a deep cenote, still has its sapodilla-wood lintels, handprints in bright paint on the walls and, in the House of the Jaguar, the faded shape of a descending cat.

In 1527 the conquistador Francisco de Montejo landed here from Cozumel and founded Salamanca de Xel-Há, the first Spanish camp on the peninsula. It was abandoned within eighteen months.