12 Best Sights in Yucatán and Campeche States, Mexico

Begun in 1561, Mérida's cathedral is one of the oldest on the North American mainland (an older one can be found in the Dominican Republic). It took several hundred Maya laborers, working with stones from the pyramids of the ravaged Maya city, 37 years to complete it. Designed in the somber Renaissance style by an architect who had worked on El Escorial in Madrid, its facade is stark and unadorned, with gunnery slits instead of windows and faintly Moorish spires.

Inside, the black Cristo de las Ampollas (Christ of the Blisters) occupies a side chapel to the left of the main altar. At 23 feet tall, it's the tallest Christ figure inside a Mexican church. The statue is a replica of the original, which was destroyed during the revolution in 1910 (also when the gold that once adorned the cathedral was carried off). According to one of many legends, the Christ figure burned all night and appeared the next morning unscathed—except for its namesake blisters. You can hear the pipe organ play at the 11 am Sunday Mass.

It took two centuries (from 1650 to 1850) to finish this cathedral, and, as a result, it incorporates both neoclassical and Renaissance elements. On the simple limestone exterior, sculptures of saints in niches are covered in black netting to discourage pigeons from unintentional desecration. The church's neoclassical interior is also somewhat plain and sparse. The high point of its collection, now housed in the side chapel museum, is a magnificent Holy Sepulchre carved from ebony and decorated with stamped silver angels, flowers, and decorative curlicues. Each angel holds a symbol of the Stations of the Cross.

Several blocks south of the city center, the restored Hermitage of St. Isabel, also known as the Hermitage of the Good Trip stands on a square that is the heart of the neighborhood named after the church—La Ermita. Completed in 1748, the beautiful edifice served as a resting place for colonial-era travelers headed to Campeche. It's one of the most peaceful places in the city and a good destination for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, though it's typically open only during mass. Behind the hermitage are huge tropical gardens, which have a waterfall and footpaths and which are usually unlocked during daylight hours.

Facing the main plaza, the enormous 16th-century former monastery and church of St. Anthony of Padua is perched on—and built from—the remains of a Maya pyramid devoted to Itzamná, god of the heavens. The monastery's ocher-painted church, where Pope John Paul II led prayers in 1993, has a gigantic atrium (supposedly second in size only to the Vatican's) facing a colonnaded facade and rows of 75 white-trimmed arches. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, to whom the church is dedicated, is the patron saint of the Yucatán. A statue of Nuestra Señora de Izamal, or Our Lady of Izamal, was brought here from Guatemala in 1562 by Bishop Diego de Landa. Miracles are ascribed to her, and a yearly pilgrimage takes place in her honor. Frescoes of saints at the front of the church, once plastered over, were rediscovered and refurbished in 1996.

The monastery and church are now illuminated in a light-and-sound show of the type common at some archaeological sites. You can catch a Spanish-only narration and the play of lights on the nearly 500-year-old structure at 8:30 every night but Sunday. Diagonally across from the cathedral, the small municipal market is worth a wander. It's the kind of place where if you stop to watch how the merchants prepare food, they may let you in on their cooking secrets.

Five long blocks away from the main plaza is the 16th-century, terra-cotta Ex-Convento e Iglesia San Bernardino, a Franciscan church and former monastery. The church was actually built over Cenote Sis-Há, which provided the monks with a clean water source. You can view the cenote through a grate in the well house, where much of the original stone still remains. If a priest is around, ask him to show you the 16th-century frescoes, protected behind curtains near the altarpiece. The lack of proportion in the human figures shows the initial clumsiness of indigenous artisans in reproducing the Christian saints.

The Jesuits built this fine baroque church in honor of St. Joseph just before they were booted out of the New World in 1767. Its block-long facade and portal are covered with blue-and-yellow Talavera tiles and crowned with seven narrow stone finials—resembling both the roof combs on many Mayan temples and the combs Spanish women once wore in their elaborate hairdos. You can ask the guard (who should be somewhere on the grounds) to let you in. From the outside you can admire Campeche's first lighthouse, built in 1864 and perched atop the right-hand tower.

Just north of Parque Hidalgo is one of Mérida's oldest buildings and the first Jesuit church in the Yucatán. It was built in 1618 from the limestone blocks of a dismantled Maya temple, and faint outlines of ancient carvings are still visible on the west wall. Although the church is a favorite place for society weddings, its interior is not ornate. In former convent rooms at the rear of the building, however, you'll find the Pinoteca Juan Gamboa Guzmán, a small but interesting art collection. The most engaging pieces are the striking bronze sculptures of indigenous Maya crafted by celebrated 20th-century sculptor Enrique Gottdiener Soto. On the second floor are about 20 forgettable oil paintings—mostly of past civic officials.

This evocatively faded red church is typical of Yucatán's colonial sanctuaries. It has been ransacked on more than one occasion, but the Cristo Negro (Black Christ) altarpiece is original. The best view might be from the outside, where you can take in the facade and savor the slow pace of the town as families ride by in carts attached to bicycles and locals mill around in traditional Maya dress.

With its flat, boldly painted facade and bells ensconced under small arches instead of in bell towers, the Church of St. Francis looks more like a Mexican city hall than a Catholic church. Outside the city center in a residential neighborhood, the beautifully restored temple is Campeche's oldest. It marks the spot where some say the first Mass on the North American continent was held in 1517—though the same claim has been made for Veracruz and Cozumel. One of conquistador Hernán Cortés's grandsons was baptized here, and the baptismal font still stands.

Like most Franciscan churches, this one is sober and plain, and its single bell tower is the only ornamentation. The equally sparse interior is brightened a bit by some colorful stained-glass windows, and the carved and inlaid altarpiece serves as a beautiful backdrop for an ebony image of Jesus, the "Black Christ," brought from Italy in about 1575. Although understandably skeptical of Christianity, the indigenous people, who the Spaniards forced into perpetual servitude, eventually came to associate this Black Christ figure with miracles. As legend has it, a ship that refused to carry the holy statue was lost at sea, while the ship that accepted it reached Campeche in record time. To this day, the Feast of San Román—when worshippers carry a black-wood Christ and silver filigree cross through the streets—remains a solemn but colorful affair.

On the south side of the town's main plaza stands the large Iglesia de San Servacio, sometimes spelled "San Gervasio." Although many refer to it as a catedral, it is not the seat of the diocese—that's in Mérida. Its limestone exterior is impressive, but the interior is rather plain. The church makes a stunning anchor for the plaza when illuminated at night.

The elaborately carved main altarpiece and matching side altars here were restored inch by inch, and this long, narrow house of worship now adds more than ever to historic Calle 59's old-fashioned beauty. Built in 1565, it was originally called Iglesia de San Francisco for St. Francis. In addition to a statue of Francis, humbler-looking saints peer out from smaller niches.