Colorful Campeche, MX is worthy UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Catedral de la Nuestra Senora de la Purisma Concepcion was begun in 1540 but not completed until 1760; it is notable for having one of the few Baroque church facades on the Yucatan peninsula

Campeche, a city of roughly 250000, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of the state of preservation and quality of its architecture; early Campeche was terrorized by pirates and marauders until the city started fortification in 1676

Campeche City was founded in 1540 by Spanish conquistadores atop the pre-existing Maya city of Can Pech; originally, the Spaniards lived inside the walled city, while the indigenous Maya people lived in the surrounding barrios (the word Maya is used to designate people, places and culture while Mayan is the spoken language)

Within this beautiful arcade, on the city's central square, is the former city hall which is now a cultural center; nightly (except Mondays), a spectacular sound and light show is projected onto this building celebrating Campeche's history and Maya roots

Built by the Jesuits in 1716, the Ex-Templo de San Jose is decorated with an impressive Talavera-type, blue-and-yellow tile facade; the church has morphed into a lighthouse then to a library to a warehouse to today a folk art market

The walls around part of the city are a reminder of the viceroyalty of the 17th and 18th centuries while colorful facades of homes and businesses paint a vibrant scene, each street full of stories and legends; from above, we could see how many building interiors were gutted and/or abandoned despite the attractive outward appearance

Build in the mid-17th century, the Temple of San Francisquito is today the headquarters of the Campeche Institute of Culture; sister cities of Campeche include Cartegena (Colombia), Laredo, Ibiza and Halifax (Canada)

Baluarte Santiago was completed in 1704 but torn down in the early 1900s for government offices; the reconstructed building from 1955 bears little resemblance to the original but now houses a botanical garden with 200+ local species

Recently, Campeche has seen a surge in tourism as noted by the rooftop tapas + wine bars; local cuisine like pan de cazón: a stacked, casserole dish consisting of tortillas, beans and dogfish with a tomato-based habanero sauce is supposedly quite good

The Art Deco Selem building housed Campeche's first modern movie theater when it was built in 1951 (and it was air-conditioned); it stood out as the only Art Deco building in the walled city and is now a thriving department store

The Land Gate was one of two heavily fortified gates into the city; today it hosts the only original section of the city's walls remaining so we paid a small fee to walk atop the wall for a birds-eye view of the city

The Baluarte San Carlos is the oldest of the city's nine bastions to be built, completed in 1676 and dedicated to King Carlos II of Spain; the bastion has a pentagonal shape and now houses the free Museum of the City

Calle 59 (conveniently, all streets are numbered with odd going one direction and even, the other) used to host some of Campeche's finest homes but many have now been converted into popular restaurants

Our hotel had a view of the Bay of Campeche but there are no real beaches in the city proper and the bay is so shallow there are no waves; there is a nice, wide malecon but the traffic on the waterfront street so continuous that I could never get across