5 essays tagged “ruins”.
Rome, Italy
Rome is a city that asks you to surrender, and the surrender takes about three days. On day one you fight it. On day two you photograph it. On day three you eat too much. On day four, if you're lucky, you simply walk in it. This piece is for day four.
May 22, 2023
Aguas Calientes, Peru
Machu Picchu is a place that survives its reputation almost entirely. The site is genuinely astonishing — a complete Inca city built on a vertical Andean ridge at 2,400 m, abandoned to the cloud forest for centuries, rediscovered in 1911. The trick is choosing how to arrive.
June 12, 2022
Petra, Jordan
The Treasury at Petra is the iconic photograph; the city itself is much larger and much weirder than the photograph suggests. The Nabataean Empire carved an entire capital out of the sandstone cliffs of southern Jordan, and most visitors see less than a quarter of it.
September 22, 2021
Hanga Roa, Chile
Easter Island — Rapa Nui in the local Polynesian — is the most isolated inhabited island on earth, 3,500 km from the nearest continental coast. The 900 moai are the iconic image; the contemporary Rapanui community living among them is the deeper experience.
September 8, 2021
Tulum, Mexico
Tulum's transformation from a sleepy palm-shaded strip of palapa cabins to a brand-saturated wellness-tourism corridor has been one of the more dramatic coastal-tourism shifts in Latin America. The cenotes, the Mayan ruins, the wider Yucatán remain.
July 12, 2021