Nazca Travel Guide

The Nazca Lines are a vast group of geoglyphs etched into the arid plateau of southern Peru's Nazca Desert, created by the Nazca culture between roughly 500 BC and 600 AD. The site comprises more than 800 straight lines, geometric shapes and stylized figures of hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys and whales—some spanning hundreds of meters and visible only from the air. Brought to global attention by anthropologist Paul Kosok in 1939, they were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 and remain one of archaeology's great mysteries, likely tied to astronomy or ritual. The best way to appreciate them is a 30-minute small-plane flight from Nazca airport; a ground observation tower also offers close-up views of a few figures.

Didactic Museum Antonini is a famous attraction in Peru, worth visiting.

The Cantalloc Aqueducts outside Nazca are spiral subterranean channels built by the Nazca culture about 1,500 years ago and still used for irrigation today, a masterpiece of ancient hydraulic engineering.

Chauchilla Cemetery is an ancient Nazca burial site about 30 km south of Nazca, where naturally mummified remains and pottery offerings lie in open tombs, a striking window into Nazca funerary culture.