Tulum features the Yucatan Peninsula's only archaeological Mayan site.

You enter through a breach in the wall which protected the city on three sides-the fourth was defended by the sea. This wall, some 5m (16ft) high with a walkway around the top, may have been defensive, but more likely its prime purpose was to distinguish the ceremonial and administrative zone (the site you see now) from the residential enclaves, which were mostly constructed of perishable material.

As you go through the walls the chief structures lie directly ahead of you, with The Castillo (the castle) rising on its rocky prominence above the sea.

At The Templo de los Frescos (temple of the frescoes) the partly restored murals that can be seen inside the temple depict Mayan gods

And symbols of nature's fertility: rain, corn and fish. They originally adorned an earlier structure and have been preserved by the construction around them of a gallery and still later (during the fifteenth century) by the addition of a second temple above it with walls which, characteristically, slope outwards at the top. On the corners of the gallery are carved masks of Chac, or perhaps of the creator god Itzamna.

Aside from its role as a temple, it may well have served as a beacon or lighthouse; even with out a light it would have been and important landmark for mariners along an otherwise monotonously featureless coastline. You climb first to a small square, in the middle of which stood an altar, before tacking the broad stairway to the top of the castle itself. To the left of this plaza stands the Templo del Dios Descendente.

The diving or descending god-depicted here above the narrow entrance of the temple-appears all over Tulum as a small, upside-down figure. His exact significance is not known; he may represent the setting sun, rain, or lightning, or he may be the bee god, since honey was one of the Mayan's most important exports. Opposite is the Templo de Las Series Iniciales (temple of the initial series), so called because in it was found a stela bearing a date well before the foundation of the city, and presumably brought here from else where.