Campeche

Campeche was the main port of the Yucatán and it was raided so often through the seventeenth century that the crown eventually paid for something drastic: a hexagonal circuit of stone walls with eight bastions, gates to land and sea, and forts on the hills at either end. The pirates stopped coming, the walls stopped mattering, and much of the circuit was pulled down in the nineteenth century, but the bastions, the two gates and long stretches of curtain wall survive. Inside them the grid of streets is painted in flat blocks of ochre, blue, pink and green, restored to an unusually consistent standard, which is why UNESCO listed it in 1999. The forts now hold Maya collections, including jade burial masks from Calakmul.

History

The Hernández de Córdoba expedition of 1517, among the first Europeans on the Yucatán Peninsula, landed on 22 March at Can Pech, capital of a Maya city-state, and named it after Saint Lazarus; Francisco de Montejo, granted the right to conquer Yucatán in 1526, founded Salamanca de Campeche in 1531, and in 1540 San Francisco de Campeche was founded on the site of Can Pech, of which little trace remains. The rich colonial port was terrorised by pirates, among them in the sacks of 1633 and 1663, until fortifications were built between 1686 and 1704, and Campeche is, with Quebec City, one of the few cities in North America that keeps most of its old walls. In 1999 the quality and preservation of its architecture made it a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Campeche (city)).

The main sights

• The bastions and gates - Puerta de Tierra and Puerta de Mar with surviving wall.
• The painted streets - flat blocks of colour across the whole old town.
• Fuerte de San Miguel - hilltop fort with the jade masks from Calakmul.
• The malecón - the long seafront promenade, best at sunset.

When to go

November to April is the dry season and far more comfortable; the Gulf coast is hot and humid, and summer brings heavy rain. The light on the painted facades is best early and late. A sound and light show runs at Puerta de Tierra several evenings a week.

Before you go

The restoration is so uniform that some visitors find the old town feels staged rather than lived in, and much of it empties in the evening. There is no swimmable beach in the city itself. Heat and humidity are heavy outside the winter months, and shade in the grid is limited at midday.

Nearby

Edzná is an hour inland; Calakmul is a long drive south.

Key facts