Ruins above the Caribbean — where the Tulum Mayan ruins (a walled clifftop city overlooking turquoise Caribbean waters, continuously occupied from 1200–1521 CE) is the most photographed archaeological site in Mexico, the freshwater cenotes of the Yucatán Peninsula's underground river network (the world's longest flooded cave system) create diving conditions found nowhere else on earth, Tulum's hotel zone has the highest concentration of boutique eco-lodges in Latin America, and the Tren Maya high-speed rail (2023) links Tulum to Mérida in three hours
Tulum (35,000 town; Tulum municipality 50,000; tourist zone along the coast hosts several thousand simultaneously) is a small Yucatecan town on the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo state, approximately 130 km south of Cancún. It is famous primarily for two overlapping draws: the Tulum Archaeological Zone (the only Mayan walled city built on a cliff above the sea, active from 1200 CE, one of the last inhabited Mayan cities before Spanish contact) and the Sistema Sac Actun — the world's longest known flooded cave system (368 km of mapped underwater passages) whose cenotes (natural sinkholes acce…
Tulum (from Yucatec Maya 'Tulu'um', meaning 'wall' or 'fence' — referring to the fortified wall that still surrounds the site on three sides, the sea being the fourth) was established as a Mayan trading port approximately 1200 CE, during the Late Postclassic period when regional trade in cacao, salt, honey, and cloth intensified across the Yucatán and into Central America. The site was active when Juan de Grijalva's Spanish expedition first sighted it in 1518 — the size of the walled city and its cliff position made Grijalva's soldiers call it 'as large as Seville' (probably exaggerated but s…