Zona Arqueológica El Rey

El Rey is the most accessible Maya site on Cancún island itself, a compact group of low ruins at kilometre 18 of Boulevard Kukulcán, surrounded by the resorts of the Hotel Zone. It is managed by INAH, Mexico's national institute of anthropology and history, and it makes a good short counterpoint to a beach holiday: proof that this sandbar was a working Maya community centuries before the hotels arrived.

The earliest traces date to around the year 300, when a small group of fishermen built wooden, palm-roofed houses on stone platforms. Later residents fished and produced salt, both for their own use and for tribute and trade with larger cities inland. The settlement reached its peak between 1300 and 1550, when the coastal population grew and the economy turned on the sea between the Caribbean and the Nichupté lagoon. After the Spanish arrived, its people fled inland and the island stayed empty until the early twentieth century. Nobody knows the settlement's original name, because no glyphic inscriptions have been found. "El Rey" comes from a carved head interpreted as a noble figure, first photographed in 1909 and now displayed at the Museo Maya de Cancún.

What you see today is a main avenue running north to south and two small plazas. Houses stand on platforms along the avenue, each with a porticoed entrance and a bench, a daytime area and a rear room that may have been for sleeping. Small square altars in the middle of the avenue were probably used for family ceremonies. The southern residences include masonry buildings, while the northern platforms once carried wood and palm houses, and some structures keep fragments of murals depicting gods. INAH notes that the northern platforms line up with the pyramid at San Miguelito, suggesting both belonged to one settlement nearly three kilometres long.

The site is compact, so an hour is usually enough. It suits anyone curious about the Maya who cannot fit in a long day trip to Chichén Itzá or Tulum, and it works well with children because distances are short. INAH lists the site as open daily from 8:00 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, and an admission fee applies.

Combine it with the Museo Maya and the San Miguelito ruins, about a kilometre and a half back along the boulevard, to see the head of El Rey itself, or continue south towards Playa Delfines for a swim afterwards.