Places alessandralee Wants to Go

A circle of stones on a hilltop in Peru’s high jungle, aligned with the winter solstice and largely ignored by archaeologists.

A small, emotionally charged room inside the Mario Testino Museum dedicated to Princess Diana and one famous photo shoot.

This high-Andean reserve protects the graceful vicuña that was nearly hunted to extinction for its precious wool.

Situated on a sacred Inca site, this 16th-century cathedral took nearly 100 years to build.

On this tiny spot of land in the middle of Lake Titicaca the only ones who do the knitting are the men.

A kitschy Italian medieval-style castle incongruously located amidst one of the most historic towns in the Peruvian Amazon.

This small oxbow lake has rare giant river otters and some Seussian-sounding birds.

The depictions of slaughter are surprisingly detailed at this mysterious ancient site.

The large collection of pre-Columbian pottery might make you blush.

After an epic flood washed away its enslavers, this city has been part ghost town, part cultural wildcard for the past three centuries.

Hundreds of mummies in a silent room, some with eerily pained expressions preserved on their faces.

This Peruvian bone silo lined with hanging human skeletons and hundreds of skulls is topped with a remarkable Michelangelo replica.

Art school in the Amazon: Drugs, nature and sustainable agriculture.

A pretty park of over 1,600 olive trees that grew from just three saplings brought over from Spain.

An Archaeological Wonder of Peru, and the largest stone ruin site in the New World.

Did Inca children also slide down these smooth rocky slopes above Cusco?

These delicate ruins need more tourists to keep them from fading away.

A mysterious pre-Incan ruin believed to have miraculous healing powers.

Ain't no party like a ghost town party.

A colorful Peruvian city of the dead.

These steeply terraced ruins are a stop along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

Death rituals and sacrifice inside a Peruvian megalith.

Lima’s Museum of Anthropology is lined with thousands of elongated human craniums.

The stones of this Incan wall complex fit together so well you couldn't fit a piece of paper between some of them.