Explore all 42 countries

The Texas State Capitol in downtown Austin houses the Texas Legislature and the office of the Governor. Designed by Elijah E. Myers in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, it was built of red granite between 1882 and 1888 and is 92 metres tall to the top of its dome; visitors can walk through the rotunda, see the chambers and take guided tours.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary is the cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Austin, two blocks east of Congress Avenue in downtown Austin. The Gothic Revival church was designed by the Irish-born architect Nicholas J. Clayton, finished in 1874, given its towers and spires in 1907 and made a cathedral in 1948; inside are tree-like columns with carved capitals and stained glass.

The Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge carries Congress Avenue over Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin. The concrete arch bridge opened in 1910 and was rebuilt in 1980; gaps under its deck house a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats that, from spring to autumn, fly out at dusk while people watch from the bridge, the banks and boats.

Zilker Park is a city park of more than 140 hectares in south Austin, where Barton Creek meets Lady Bird Lake. It is named after Andrew Jackson Zilker, who handed the land to the city in stages from 1917, and was laid out in the 1930s; it includes Barton Springs Pool, the Zilker Botanical Garden, a nature and science centre and lawns used for festivals.

A park on the rocky southern tip of Isla Mujeres, across the bay from Cancún, built around the Garrafón reef. Visitors snorkel and kayak along the reef, cross a zip line over the water and walk on to Punta Sur, the island's southern cliff.

A Maya site on the northern edge of Cancún near Puerto Juárez, settled from about AD 300 and at its height between the 11th and 16th centuries as a port on the coast. Its pyramid, El Castillo, about 12.5 metres high, stands among smaller temples, plazas and palaces.

A show nightclub at Punta Cancún in the Hotel Zone, opened in 1997, where the evening mixes music, acrobats, aerial acts and tribute numbers to films and singers on several stages over the dance floor.

A bar and restaurant of the Señor Frog's chain on the Nichupté lagoon at Punta Cancún in the Hotel Zone, serving Mexican food and drinks, with music, a dance floor and evening parties.

An aquarium in the La Isla shopping centre in the Hotel Zone, on the Nichupté lagoon. Its tanks show fish, rays, turtles and sharks of the Mexican Caribbean, with a touch pool and programmes in which visitors meet dolphins and sea lions.

A museum of the INAH in the Hotel Zone, opened in 2012, with three halls of Maya objects from Quintana Roo and the rest of the Maya region, including finds from underwater caves. Its grounds hold the Maya site of San Miguelito, a group of small temples and palaces in the forest.

A public beach on the open Caribbean side of the Hotel Zone, at kilometre 18 of Boulevard Kukulcán, with no hotel on its sand. A viewpoint above it holds the large painted Cancún letters, and the Maya site of El Rey lies across the road.

A Maya site in the Hotel Zone, between the lagoon and the sea at kilometre 18 of Boulevard Kukulcán, at its height from about 1200 until the Spanish conquest. Platforms, temples and palaces line two long plazas, and iguanas live among the stones.

More than 500 cement sculptures placed on the seabed off Cancún, Isla Mujeres and Punta Nizuc from 2009 onwards, by Jason deCaires Taylor and other artists, to draw divers away from the natural reefs and give corals a new place to grow. They are seen on snorkel and dive trips or from glass-bottomed boats.

Natural Bridge Caverns is a show cave in the Texas Hill Country near San Antonio, discovered in 1960 by four St. Mary's University students and opened to visitors in 1964. It is named after the 60-foot (18 m) limestone bridge spanning the entrance sinkhole; guided tours lead past stalactites and other formations to about 180 feet (55 m) underground.

The McNay Art Museum opened in 1954 in the Spanish Colonial Revival house that painter Marion Koogler McNay built in 1927 to designs by Atlee and Robert Ayres. Its collection covers 19th- and 20th-century European and American art, and the Jane and Arthur Stieren Center by Jean-Paul Viguier (2008) holds exhibitions.

The San Antonio Botanical Garden opened in 1980 on a former limestone quarry and waterworks site north of downtown and covers about 17 hectares. Its Lucile Halsell Conservatory, designed by Emilio Ambasz in 1988, groups glass greenhouses around a sunken courtyard; outside are a Japanese garden, rose and cactus gardens and a Texas native trail.

The Japanese Tea Garden lies in a former limestone quarry on the northwestern edge of Brackenridge Park, next to the San Antonio Zoo. Laid out from 1917 by Parks Commissioner Ray Lambert, it has stone paths and arched bridges, koi ponds, a waterfall and a thatched pavilion; the Jingu family lived in the garden from 1919 and ran a tea room there.

Six Flags Fiesta Texas is a theme park in northwest San Antonio, about 22 km from downtown, opened in 1992 inside a former limestone quarry whose cliffs ring much of the park. Its themed areas draw on Texas's German, Hispanic and western heritage and hold roller coasters such as Iron Rattler and Superman: Krypton Coaster, family rides and stage shows.

The San Antonio Museum of Art occupies the former Lone Star Brewery, a castle-like brick complex from the 1880s on the Museum Reach of the River Walk, and opened in 1981. Its collection of about 30,000 objects covers antiquities from Egypt, Greece and Rome, Asian art, Latin American art including folk art, and modern and contemporary works.

The Alamo is the former Mission San Antonio de Valero, founded by Spanish Franciscans in 1718, whose limestone church and Long Barrack stand on Alamo Plaza downtown. In 1836 it was the site of the Battle of the Alamo in the Texas Revolution, in which its defenders were killed. Visitors enter the church, walk the grounds and see exhibits of the period.