2 Best Sights in Izamal, Yucatán and Campeche States

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.

The Kinich Kakmó pyramid was the largest pre-Hispanic construction in the Yucatán and is the third-largest pyramid in Mexico, after the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan and the Cholula Pyramid near Puebla. It's all that remains of the royal Maya city that flourished here between AD 250 and 600. Dedicated to a Maya sun god, the massive structure is more remarkable for its size than for any remaining decoration.