Ghost stories
Chavín de Huántar · A Horn in the Passage
Chavín de Huántar stands high in a valley, a temple complex three thousand years old. Its stones are carved with figures that combine human and jaguar forms, and the longest...
Chavín de Huántar · A Horn in the Passage
Chavín de Huántar stands high in a valley, a temple complex three thousand years old. Its stones are carved with figures that combine human and jaguar forms, and the longest...
Chan Chan · The Great City the Rain Destroyed
Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimú kingdom, built of adobe, its walls enclosing nine palace compounds, with reliefs of fish and fishing nets still on them. It was...
Chan Chan · The Great City the Rain Destroyed
Chan Chan was the capital of the Chimú kingdom, built of adobe, its walls enclosing nine palace compounds, with reliefs of fish and fishing nets still on them. It was...
Lake Titicaca · Where the Sun Rose
Lake Titicaca is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, its surface at three thousand eight hundred metres, the water so deep in colour that it looks black....
Lake Titicaca · Where the Sun Rose
Lake Titicaca is one of the highest navigable lakes in the world, its surface at three thousand eight hundred metres, the water so deep in colour that it looks black....
The Ica Stones · Stones Carved with Strange Things
From the 1960s onwards, tens of thousands of carved stones circulated in the markets around Ica. They carry images of dinosaurs, surgery, telescopes and people riding animals, none of which...
The Ica Stones · Stones Carved with Strange Things
From the 1960s onwards, tens of thousands of carved stones circulated in the markets around Ica. They carry images of dinosaurs, surgery, telescopes and people riding animals, none of which...
Sacsayhuamán · The Stone That Had to Be Moved
Sacsayhuamán stands on the high ground north of Cusco, a set of walls built from enormous stones: the largest weigh more than a hundred tonnes, cut with sharp edges and...
Sacsayhuamán · The Stone That Had to Be Moved
Sacsayhuamán stands on the high ground north of Cusco, a set of walls built from enormous stones: the largest weigh more than a hundred tonnes, cut with sharp edges and...
Cusco’s Qorikancha · The Temple Under the Church
The Qorikancha in Cusco once had gold plates on its walls and a courtyard at its centre, dedicated to the sun, the moon, the stars and the rainbow. The Spanish...
Cusco’s Qorikancha · The Temple Under the Church
The Qorikancha in Cusco once had gold plates on its walls and a courtyard at its centre, dedicated to the sun, the moon, the stars and the rainbow. The Spanish...
The Nazca Lines · Drawings You Cannot See from ...
Huge lines and figures are cut into the Nazca desert: a hummingbird, a monkey, a spider, a tree and dozens of straight lines, some several kilometres long, whose full shape...
The Nazca Lines · Drawings You Cannot See from ...
Huge lines and figures are cut into the Nazca desert: a hummingbird, a monkey, a spider, a tree and dozens of straight lines, some several kilometres long, whose full shape...
Machu Picchu · A City Built Above the Cloud Line
Machu Picchu stands on a ridge between two peaks, more than two thousand four hundred metres up. Its stone walls use no mortar; the blocks are ground to fit so...
Machu Picchu · A City Built Above the Cloud Line
Machu Picchu stands on a ridge between two peaks, more than two thousand four hundred metres up. Its stone walls use no mortar; the blocks are ground to fit so...
Lima’s Catacombs · Bones Arranged in Patterns
Beneath the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima is a whole complex of catacombs, said to have held twenty-five thousand people. The bones were sorted by shape and stacked into...
Lima’s Catacombs · Bones Arranged in Patterns
Beneath the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima is a whole complex of catacombs, said to have held twenty-five thousand people. The bones were sorted by shape and stacked into...
Rio’s São Bento Monastery · The Monastery on th...
Rio’s São Bento Monastery stands on a hilltop and has been home to Benedictine monks for more than four hundred years from the seventeenth century on. It is one of...
Rio’s São Bento Monastery · The Monastery on th...
Rio’s São Bento Monastery stands on a hilltop and has been home to Benedictine monks for more than four hundred years from the seventeenth century on. It is one of...
Lençóis Maranhenses · Lakes in the White Sand
The Lençóis in Maranhão is a stretch of white dunes that goes on past the horizon; in the rainy season fresh-water lakes gather between them, green in colour, and fish...
Lençóis Maranhenses · Lakes in the White Sand
The Lençóis in Maranhão is a stretch of white dunes that goes on past the horizon; in the rainy season fresh-water lakes gather between them, green in colour, and fish...
Tijuca Forest · The Forest the City Grew Back
Tijuca Forest is one of the largest urban forests in the world: it grows on the hills of Rio, with waterfalls, caves and walking trails inside the city, and a...
Tijuca Forest · The Forest the City Grew Back
Tijuca Forest is one of the largest urban forests in the world: it grows on the hills of Rio, with waterfalls, caves and walking trails inside the city, and a...
Petrópolis Imperial Museum · The Emperor’s Summ...
Petrópolis lies in the mountains north of Rio, where the climate is cool, and was the site of the Brazilian emperor’s summer palace. The palace is not large: white walls,...
Petrópolis Imperial Museum · The Emperor’s Summ...
Petrópolis lies in the mountains north of Rio, where the climate is cool, and was the site of the Brazilian emperor’s summer palace. The palace is not large: white walls,...
Saci · The Wind with One Leg
Saci is the best-known figure in Brazilian folklore: a dark-skinned boy with one leg, a red cap on his head, a pipe in his mouth, hiding inside a bamboo shoot....
Saci · The Wind with One Leg
Saci is the best-known figure in Brazilian folklore: a dark-skinned boy with one leg, a red cap on his head, a pipe in his mouth, hiding inside a bamboo shoot....
The Amazon’s Curupira · The One with Backward Feet
In Amazonian legend the Curupira is a guardian of the forest: short, with bark-like skin, red hair and feet turned backwards. Its footprints point the opposite way, and anyone who...
The Amazon’s Curupira · The One with Backward Feet
In Amazonian legend the Curupira is a guardian of the forest: short, with bark-like skin, red hair and feet turned backwards. Its footprints point the opposite way, and anyone who...
Salvador’s Pelourinho · The Gold Church and the...
Salvador was Brazil’s first capital, and Pelourinho is its old town: coloured Portuguese buildings, cobbled streets and a dozen or more churches packed onto a single slope. The Church of...
Salvador’s Pelourinho · The Gold Church and the...
Salvador was Brazil’s first capital, and Pelourinho is its old town: coloured Portuguese buildings, cobbled streets and a dozen or more churches packed onto a single slope. The Church of...
The Twelve Prophets of Congonhas · Figures Carv...
In front of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus in Congonhas stand twelve soapstone prophets, each with a different stance, beard and gaze, all by one sculptor — Aleijadinho, “the little...
The Twelve Prophets of Congonhas · Figures Carv...
In front of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus in Congonhas stand twelve soapstone prophets, each with a different stance, beard and gaze, all by one sculptor — Aleijadinho, “the little...
Ouro Preto · A City Dug Out of Gold
Ouro Preto is a city of the Brazilian gold rush: in the eighteenth century its mines produced gold in great quantity, its richest church was covered wall to wall in...
Ouro Preto · A City Dug Out of Gold
Ouro Preto is a city of the Brazilian gold rush: in the eighteenth century its mines produced gold in great quantity, its richest church was covered wall to wall in...
Joelma Building · After the Fire, Nobody Moved ...
In 1974 the Joelma Building in São Paulo caught fire when the air-conditioning wiring short-circuited. There was no fire escape, many people jumped from the windows, and close to two...
Joelma Building · After the Fire, Nobody Moved ...
In 1974 the Joelma Building in São Paulo caught fire when the air-conditioning wiring short-circuited. There was no fire escape, many people jumped from the windows, and close to two...
Copper Canyon · The Hardest Road in the World
Copper Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon; several canyons run together here, and the Tarahumara live in them. They are known for long-distance running, able to keep going for...
Copper Canyon · The Hardest Road in the World
Copper Canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon; several canyons run together here, and the Tarahumara live in them. They are known for long-distance running, able to keep going for...
Zacatecas’s Eden Mine · Going Down by Mine Cart
Zacatecas is a city built on silver mining, and the Eden Mine on its edge was worked from the sixteenth century into the twentieth. Its tunnels descend in seven levels,...
Zacatecas’s Eden Mine · Going Down by Mine Cart
Zacatecas is a city built on silver mining, and the Eden Mine on its edge was worked from the sixteenth century into the twentieth. Its tunnels descend in seven levels,...
Templo Mayor · The Gold Beneath the City
The Aztecs saw an eagle standing on a cactus with a snake in its beak, and built their city there — the site of today’s Mexico City. The Templo Mayor...
Templo Mayor · The Gold Beneath the City
The Aztecs saw an eagle standing on a cactus with a snake in its beak, and built their city there — the site of today’s Mexico City. The Templo Mayor...
Oaxaca’s Day of the Dead · Inviting the Dead Ba...
Oaxaca’s Day of the Dead begins at the end of October. Households set up altars with photographs of the dead, bread, liquor and the food they liked, and scatter orange...
Oaxaca’s Day of the Dead · Inviting the Dead Ba...
Oaxaca’s Day of the Dead begins at the end of October. Households set up altars with photographs of the dead, bread, liquor and the food they liked, and scatter orange...
Teotihuacán · Who Built This City
Around the turn of the era Teotihuacán was the largest city in the Americas, with more than a hundred thousand people, and yet it was abandoned at the height of...
Teotihuacán · Who Built This City
Around the turn of the era Teotihuacán was the largest city in the Americas, with more than a hundred thousand people, and yet it was abandoned at the height of...