Ancient Mystery Sites You Can Visit in Peru

Peru is, by any reasonable measure, one of the great archaeological destinations on Earth. In a country the size of Alaska, you'll find geoglyphs visible only from the air, mortarless stone walls that have outlasted everything Spain built, a doorway carved from solid rock that opens onto nothing, and a high-altitude plateau covered in formations that look like sculpted faces. Ancient Aliens has used Peru as a backdrop across dozens of episodes — and for once, the show undersells it.

Here are six sites featured in the series that you can actually visit — including how to get there and what you'll find when you do.

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1. The Nazca Lines **Country:** Peru | **Region:** Ica Desert, southern coast | **Elevation:** ~400 meters

The Nazca Lines are a collection of over 800 straight lines, 300 geometric figures, and 70 animal and plant geoglyphs etched into the desert floor of southern Peru — the largest concentration of geoglyphs in the world. Created by the Nazca culture between 500 BC and 500 AD, they cover an area of roughly 500 square kilometers.

Ancient Aliens (Season 1, Episode 1; Season 5, Episode 8) presents them as landing strips or signals for alien spacecraft — the argument being that figures visible only from altitude must have been intended for observers in the sky. What archaeology has established is that the lines are visible from nearby hillsides as well, and that their creation — removing iron-oxide pebbles to expose lighter soil — required only organized groups, sighting poles, and measuring cords, not altitude.

The genuinely unanswered question is ritual purpose. The spider geoglyph accurately depicts the reproductive organ of a rare Amazonian spider not native to the coastal desert. Someone traveled between ecosystems to study this creature carefully enough to represent it at landscape scale. Why?

Getting there: Fly or take a bus to the city of Nazca (6-7 hours from Lima). Scenic flights over the lines depart from Nazca airport; book in advance, especially in peak season. Ground-level observation towers along the Pan-American Highway give a limited but free view.

Best time to visit: May through September (dry season) for clearest flying conditions.

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2. Machu Picchu **Country:** Peru | **Region:** Cusco, Sacred Valley | **Elevation:** 2,430 meters

The Inca citadel built by Emperor Pachacuti in the mid-15th century is Peru's most-visited archaeological site — and justifiably so. The mortar-free stonework, the terraced agriculture, the water management system, and the mountain setting combine to make it genuinely unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Ancient Aliens (Seasons 3, 11, 17) focuses on the precision stonework (argued to require alien tools), GPR anomalies beneath the site (suggested as hidden chambers), and the Intihuatana stone (presented as an alien astronomical instrument). All three claims have been specifically addressed by archaeologists: the precision reflects the Inca grinding technique, the GPR anomalies are consistent with drainage channels and buried walls, and the Intihuatana is a documented solar calendar.

What remains genuinely open is the site's abandonment. Machu Picchu was left, completely intact, sometime after 1532. No looting, no destruction. It simply emptied.

Getting there: Train from Cusco (or nearby Ollantaytambo) to Aguas Calientes, then bus or hike up to the site. Entry tickets are timed and sell out weeks in advance — book well ahead. The classic Inca Trail hike takes 4 days; permits are limited and should be booked months in advance.

Best time to visit: May through September. April and October offer good weather with smaller crowds.

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3. Sacsayhuaman **Country:** Peru | **Region:** Cusco | **Elevation:** 3,701 meters

Just a short uphill walk (or taxi ride) from Cusco's Plaza de Armas, Sacsayhuaman is Machu Picchu's less-visited but arguably more physically impressive sibling. Its three parallel zigzag walls are built from limestone blocks weighing up to 100 tons, fitted together without mortar. The largest block is estimated at 125 tons.

Ancient Aliens (Seasons 3, 7, 17) claims the stones appear "softened" or "melted" and that the construction required alien energy technology. Archaeological documentation — including Spanish colonial chronicles — describes the Inca construction methods in considerable detail: quarrying, shaping with stone and bronze tools, transport on log rollers, and placement using ropes and levers by large organized labor forces.

The site's zigzag design apparently represented the teeth of a puma — the overall plan of Cusco was designed to resemble this sacred animal, with Sacsayhuaman as its head. You can see the shape on a map.

Getting there: 20-minute walk uphill from Cusco's Plaza de Armas, or a short taxi. Included in the Boleto Turístico de Cusco (the regional tourist pass), which also covers several other sites.

Best time to visit: Year-round accessible. The Inti Raymi (Festival of the Sun) celebration here in June is spectacular but extremely crowded.

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4. Ollantaytambo **Country:** Peru | **Region:** Sacred Valley | **Elevation:** 2,792 meters

Ollantaytambo is a living Inca town — people still inhabit the original stone buildings on the original street grid — with a spectacular fortress and temple complex above it. The Wall of Six Monoliths at the Temple of the Sun comprises enormous pink granite blocks hauled from a quarry across the Urubamba River valley, a transport route whose abandoned stones you can still trace today.

Ancient Aliens (Season 3) highlights the transport logistics and claims the stone bosses visible on some blocks are remnants of anti-gravity lifting mechanisms. They are actually rope-attachment points, a standard Inca construction feature — and unfinished examples along the transport route confirm this.

Ollantaytambo also functions as the gateway to Machu Picchu for the Inca Trail hike. Spend a night in the town itself; the evening views of the fortress lit by the Andean dusk are worth the detour.

Getting there: 90 minutes by road or 90 minutes by train from Cusco. The town is compact and walkable; the fortress requires a short uphill climb. Entry included in the Boleto Turístico de Cusco.

Best time to visit: May through September, though the site is open year-round.

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5. Aramu Muru (Gate of the Gods) **Country:** Peru | **Region:** Puno, Lake Titicaca | **Elevation:** ~3,850 meters

Aramu Muru is a T-shaped doorway carved from solid red sandstone in a remote mountain face near Lake Titicaca. It measures 7 meters high by 6.7 meters wide and leads nowhere — the doorway opens onto solid rock. Local Quechua tradition holds that Inca priests used a golden disk to activate it as a gateway to the land of the gods.

Ancient Aliens (Seasons 7 and 14) presents it as a stargate or interdimensional portal. The T-shaped form is actually a characteristic Andean architectural motif appearing at Tiwanaku, Puma Punku, and other sites in the region — it's a doorway form, not a portal technology. The legends cited by the show were largely popularized in the 1990s and don't have deep pre-colonial roots.

What makes Aramu Muru genuinely worth visiting is its isolation. The site is remote, reaching it requires a vehicle and a guide, and the landscape surrounding it — high Altiplano grassland dropping to the glittering blue of Lake Titicaca — is among the most powerful in the Andes. The doorway in its rock face does something to you that's hard to explain with either aliens or geology.

Getting there: Approximately 35 kilometers from the town of Juli (itself near Puno). Requires a sturdy vehicle and guide; rough mountain roads. No formal visitor infrastructure; arrange through a tour operator in Puno.

Best time to visit: May through September (dry season). Roads can be impassable after heavy rains.

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6. Marcahuasi Plateau **Country:** Peru | **Region:** Lima Region, Andes | **Elevation:** ~4,000 meters

Marcahuasi is a plateau east of Lima covered with enormous granite boulders shaped by millennia of wind and water erosion into formations that appear to depict human faces, animals, and figures from different continents. Researcher Daniel Ruzo popularized the idea in the 1950s that these were deliberately carved by an advanced civilization.

Ancient Aliens (Season 3) treats Marcahuasi as evidence of a pre-Columbian global civilization, pointing to faces that resemble African, Asian, and Andean features. Mainstream geology attributes the formations to natural erosion and pareidolia — the human tendency to see faces in random shapes. No tool marks or associated artifacts have been found.

The site is genuinely one of the stranger places in Peru. At 13,000 feet, in a landscape of eroded stone and high-altitude grass, the formations are dramatic and genuinely disorienting. The question of where the line falls between natural erosion and human perception is one you'll be thinking about long after you leave.

Getting there: Village of San Pedro de Casta is the base (about 80 km northeast of Lima). From the village, a multi-hour hike or mule trek reaches the plateau. Allow 2 days minimum; camping or village accommodation required.

Best time to visit: May through September. Weather at 4,000 meters is unpredictable — be prepared for cold and rapid changes.

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Planning Your Trip

The natural base for most of these sites is Cusco for the Sacred Valley sites (Machu Picchu, Sacsayhuaman, Ollantaytambo) and Puno or La Paz for the Lake Titicaca sites (Aramu Muru). Nazca sits on the coast between Lima and Cusco. Marcahuasi is a separate day trip from Lima.

Allow at least two weeks if you want to do the Sacred Valley sites justice and add Nazca. The altitude affects most visitors — spend your first day in Cusco acclimatizing, not climbing ruins. The altitude is real, the sites are worth it, and the questions they raise will follow you home.