Several important archaeological sites are close to Mérida. Major ones that are Mexican National Parks and are described in their own articles include:
Uxmal
Chichen Itza
The ruins and national park at Dzibilchaltún are only a few minutes' drive from Mérida. An admission fee is charged. The site has been continuously occupied for thousands of years. Its most famous structure is the Temple Of The Seven Dolls, so named because of seven small effigies found at the site when the temple was discovered under the ruins of a later temple pyramid by archaeologists in the 1950s. On the Spring Equinox, the sun rises so that it shines directly through one window of the temple and out the other. The temple is connected to the rest of the site by a long sacbé. The other major feature of Dzibilchaltún is its cenote, which is used as a swimming hole by local residents year round. Dzibilchaltún is the first stop on Mexico's Ruta de los Cenotes, a network of natural and cultural sites that stretches from Mérida to Puerto Morelos on the Caribbean coast south of Cancun. Dzibilchaltún also contains the ruin of a 16th century Spanish church built at the site after the conquest. The archaeological site offers a museum which houses Mayan artifacts from the site and the adjacent region.
Cuzamá is one of the interesting sites on the Ruta de los Cenotes itinerary, with prominent cenotes sinkholes leading to significant caves.
