Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, the Parthenon and the Pyramids: the world is packed with ancient wonders whose very names have the power to evoke the grand histories of entire civilisations. But while millions of people flock to see and photograph these marvels every year, a little way off the beaten track lie lesser-known sites and landmarks that deserve similar attention. These are the world's most extraordinary ancient wonders you've probably never heard of.

Although still a top tourist destination, the sprawling Longmen Grottoes do not enjoy the same fame as China's best-known sights, like the Great Wall or the Terracotta Army. Yet, with a couple of thousand humanmade caves carved into the cliffs of the Yi River, just south of the city of Luoyang, and boasting a collection of statues, stelae, inscriptions and pagodas tens of thousands strong, they constitute an unparalleled treasure trove of Chinese Buddhist art.

Construction began with the Guyang Cave under the 5th-century emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei dynasty, and today most of the surviving grottoes come from the Tang dynasty of the 7th to 10th centuries. That was when the largest, Fengxian Si (pictured), was carved – a shrine with nine colossal statues including a 56-foot-high (17m) Buddha. The elements have robbed the statues of their original vibrant colours, but, according to UNESCO, they remain "an outstanding manifestation of human artistic creativity".

To find the largest temple built by the Romans, one must look far beyond the bounds of modern Italy to the Bekaa Valley of modern-day Lebanon. There, in a city known in antiquity as Heliopolis (now known as Baalbek), is what remains of the colossal Temple of Jupiter, which in its prime had a court measuring 344 feet (105m) by 338 feet (103m). Today, six of the temple's original columns still tower over the ruins.

Everything was bigger in Baalbek. The Temple of Jupiter was one of several huge structures in the city, and miraculously the second-century Temple of Bacchus (pictured) is still standing, having survived the rigours of the Romans, the Byzantines, multiple Arab dynasties, Crusaders, the Mongols, the Ottomans and several earthquakes. Stones of eye-watering size were quarried and cut for Baalbek's construction, from the 750-tonne blocks used in the Temple of Jupiter's podium to the so-called Forgotten Stone that weighs in at 1,650 tonnes.

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A list of the most famous Mayan sites in modern-day Mexico would surely include the great temple-cities of Chichen Itza, Calakmul, Uxmal and Palenque. Off the beaten track in the state of Campeche is the much quieter site of Edzna. Inhabited from as early as 600 BC, it grew into a city large enough for an estimated 25,000 people, and by the time it was abandoned in the late-15th century it left behind an impressive complex of buildings in a mix of architectural styles.

Undoubtedly the most prominent structure at Edzna is the five-storey pyramidal temple on the east side of the main plaza, still topped by a Mesoamerican 'roof comb'. Nearby is the Temple of the Masks, so named for its depictions of the sun god Kinich Ahau, and a ball court, which would have been a central meeting place in any Mayan community. Today, Edzna typically has fewer visitors in a year than Chichen Itza does in a day, so visitors can often have the amazing views, and the company of the site's many iguanas, to themselves.

The Indus Valley Civilisation was one of the earliest civilisations in the world and Mohenjo-Daro was one of its chief settlements, making it a good candidate for 'world's first city'. Built around 2500 BC on the banks of the Indus River in Sindh province in modern-day north Pakistan, its ruins display a degree of town planning, with a grid layout and a clear distinction between its two main areas – the Citadel and the Lower City. At its height, tens of thousands of people would have lived in Mohenjo-Daro.

The city's Citadel sat on a high summit – Mohenjo-Daro literally means ‘the mound of the dead’ – and contained a large public bath fed from the river, assembly halls and a granary. The more typical baked-brick houses in the Lower City had plumbing (including drainage systems), and residents had access to hundreds of wells. Water eventually became a problem, however, as flooding led to Mohenjo-Daro being supplanted by Harappa as the civilisation's main settlement.

"Europe’s largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art," is how UNESCO described Bru na Boinne when it was made a World Heritage site in 1993. The centrepiece of the Neolithic complex, overlooking the River Boyne in County Meath, is Newgrange, a huge circular mound from the fourth millennium BC measuring around 280 feet (85m) across and 43 feet (13m) high. As well as being a gravesite, Newgrange held significant religious and ceremonial status.

Large kerbstones that ring the mound at Newgrange were covered in beautiful carvings, achieved by using sharp stones as tools, most notably at the entrance of the main passageway which leads to a small chamber. At the time of the winter solstice, the light of the rising sun shines down this corridor, perfectly illuminating it for 17 minutes. It's a hotly anticipated event even today, and tens of thousands of people enter an annual lottery to be one of the few dozen visitors allowed to stand in the passageway.

These historic archaeological finds were all uncovered by amateurs

In 1935, prospectors looking for oil spotted a series of previously unknown ancient ruins. The resulting archaeological excavations revealed a magnificent palace and temple complex in the Elamite city of Dur Untash. The civilisation of Elam thrived in the ancient Near East in what is now southwestern Iran, alongside fellow superpowers like Babylonia and Sumer. Built in the 13th century BC partly to honour the god Inshushinak, Chogha Zanbil consisted of three concentric walls, inside which were a number of temples, palaces and royal tombs.

The innermost area is taken up entirely with the site's grandest building – a ziggurat, perhaps the finest seen outside Mesopotamia. Today, the terraced compound stands at 79 feet (24m) tall, which is estimated to be less than half its original height. The town’s downfall finally came when the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal came rampaging through with his army in the 7th century BC.

The oldest known civilisation in the Americas is the Norte Chico, also known as Caral-Supe, which flourished in the third millennium BC in a coastal region of modern-day Peru. They constructed monumental pyramids before the ancient Egyptians, and amphitheatres before the ancient Greeks, and, given the lack of defensive fortifications, seem to have lived relatively peacefully. Their capital was Caral in the desert of the Supe Valley, but perhaps even older was the settlement of Bandurria, a little way south of the modern city of Huacho.

Since the discovery of Bandurria near the Huaura River in 1973, archaeological excavations have revealed a site of more than 50 hectares, containing the monumental remains of two platform buildings and sunken plazas. The Norte Chico managed these feats with the help of shicra bags: mesh bags made of sturdy reeds and grass filled with stones, which lined construction trenches to reinforce walls, much like sand bags do today. These methods helped Bandurria’s structures survive for more than five millennia and counting.

In Greek mythology, the Titan goddess Leto – pregnant with the children of Zeus – travelled to the island of Delos to escape from the vengeful jealousy of Zeus’s wife Hera. There, she gave birth to god of the sun Apollo and goddess of hunting Artemis. The island, already a holy place despite being a tiny speck in the Aegean dwarfed by neighbouring Mykonos, became revered as a centre of ancient Greek religion. 

So sacred was Delos that it was forbidden to give birth or die there: anyone on the brink of either would be sent elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, numerous temples were built, including a sanctuary dedicated to Apollo where a colossal statue of the deity was found, as well as a theatre, stadium and hypostyle hall – a space whose roof rests on columns. As a thriving port, there were also bustling marketplaces. Perhaps the image Delos is best known for, though, remains the Terrace of the Lions: a collection of replicas of marble lions uncovered by archaeologists.

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Poking out from the canopy of the northern Cambodian jungle is an enormous – and enormously remote – temple complex. Almost obscured by foliage and looted of many of its treasures, it certainly does not look like an imperial capital anymore. Yet, shortly after it was constructed in the 10th century, Koh Ker was briefly the seat of the mighty Khmer empire, which would go on to build the far-more-famous site of Angkor Wat a couple of hundred years later.

The grandest building at Koh Ker, or Chok Gargyar as it is called in Old Khmer inscriptions, is the double sanctuary of Prasat Thom, a 118-foot-high (36m) seven-tiered pyramid that dwarfs surrounding trees. The five brick towers of Prasat Pram, meanwhile, are being steadily overgrown by the roots of strangler fig trees, and look like they've been lifted directly from an adventure movie. Visitors should count themselves fortunate they can see this much – many of the site's monuments remain inaccessible as the jungle has not yet been fully cleared of landmines.

The ultimate example of a Roman amphitheatre is surely the Colosseum, a looming landmark in the Italian capital since the first century AD. But in the Tunisian town of El Jem, or El Djem, stands one of the biggest and best-preserved amphitheatres the Romans ever built – an evocative demonstration of their imperial power in north Africa. When erected around AD 238, the town was called Thysdrus and was part of the Roman province of Africa.

With three tiers of seating, the El Jem Amphitheatre was large enough for 35,000 spectators to enjoy gladiatorial games and other large-scale events. After the Romans departed it found use as a fortress and a shelter for the civilian population, before eventually becoming a communal meeting place with shops and dwellings. The year 1979 turned out to be a big one for the amphitheatre: it was officially designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and featured in the British comedy film Monty Python's Life of Brian.

These Incan ruins surrounded by the breathtaking Andes mountains may look suspiciously like an amphitheatre, but instead of entertainment these sprawling circular terraces were likely used for ingenious agriculture. Built between 500 and a thousand years ago, the terraces were irrigated – which would have been no mean feat at 11,500 feet (3,500m) above sea level – and seemingly designed to manufacture the right environmental conditions for different crops.

The idea was that each of the Moray terraces would receive different levels of sunlight and wind, essentially making each level its own microclimate. To this day, the temperature in the top and bottommost terraces can vary by as much as 15°C (27°F), which allowed the Inca to experiment with different food sources. Food production remains at the heart of the site, with the MIL Restaurant, open since 2018, using locally-grown ingredients in their menus.

These remarkable archaeological hoaxes fooled the world

A survey in the 1960s dismissed this archaeological site on top of a hill in Turkey as nothing more than a medieval cemetery. Three decades later, excavations led by German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt instead revealed a Neolithic place of worship that has since been celebrated as the world’s oldest temple. For context, Gobekli Tepe, meaning ‘belly hill’, predates Stonehenge by some 6,000 years, as its megaliths are thought to be between 10,000 and 11,500 years old.

The large stones of Gobekli Tepe were placed in precise circles with a T-shaped pillar in the centre of each, decorated with carvings of animals like foxes, snakes, gazelles, lions and scorpions. Evidence of everyday life is distinctly absent from the site, suggesting that it was never a permanent settlement and was used solely for ritual purposes. In 2019, a year after the site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list, Turkish tourism branded a new campaign: "the year of Gobekli Tepe".

During the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1937, a national landmark and piece of the nation’s ancient history was seized, cut into pieces, taken to Rome and reassembled for public display. It was a 79-foot-tall (24m), 160-tonne obelisk, made in the 4th century AD in the Kingdom of Axum, a once-great empire which reached from the Sahara to the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula at the height of its power. It was not until 2005 that all the pieces were returned.

Today, the Obelisk of Axum stands once again in Ethiopia. It's far from the only one of its kind, but most other obelisks have collapsed over the centuries, and were never as grand or ornately decorated to begin with. Obelisks fell out of favour with the Axumites when they converted to Christianity in the mid-4th century, and this one has false doors at its base and the appearance of windows running all the way up. Nearby, the sections of an even larger obelisk, which originally stood at 108 feet (33m), remain where they fell.

If the name of this Hindu temple seems familiar, it's probably thanks to its recognisable entranceway that has become a popular travel snapshot on social media. The so-called ‘Gate of Heaven’ is a stunning example of a candi bentar split gate, a common feature in Balinese temple architecture which frames an entrance with elaborate gateposts that are perfectly divided down the middle. But there's plenty of beauty to appreciate within the temple too, like the three paduraksa portals that lead to the inner sanctum.

Lempuyang is part of a collection of temples, or pura, on the slopes of Mount Lempuyang, a highly sacred place described as one of the 'six sanctuaries of the world' – the holiest places of worship on Bali. While many start and stop their visit at the Gate of Heaven, it is possible to visit all the temples in the complex on a single four-hour hike.

Stepwells are not uncommon in India – they're used to accumulate water in huge manmade reservoirs during the rainy months in preparation for drought – but few are as striking or as old as Chand Baori. Narrowing towards the well at the bottom like an inverted pyramid, the 100-foot-deep (30m) structure boasts 13 storeys and 3,500 steps in cascading, gorgeously geometric flights on three sides. The fourth side of the well is made up of rooms and corridors built to host dignitaries.

Dating from the 8th century and allegedly named for a local ruler in the northern state of Rajasthan, Chand Baori was more a communal space than simply a well. Locals would gather – and still do – on the lower levels, where the temperature was comparatively cool, and these levels feature intricate decorations with spiritual significance. Adjoining Chand Baori is the equally stunning Harshat Mata Temple.

Now learn about the incredible archaeological discoveries that quite literally changed history