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The oldest permanent church in the Yucatán began as part of a Franciscan monastery in 1552. It was located outside Valladolid so as to function both as a place of worship for the Spanish towns-folk and as a mission for Mayan villagers. Inside is a spectacularly painted Baroque altarpiece. The cloister surrounds an overgrown, palm-filled garden with a massive stone well from 1613, built over a natural cenote (seeSan Bernardino Sisal, Valladolid).

The vast monastery of Izamal, painted ocher and white like the rest of the town (see Izamal), epitomizes the plain, austere style favored by the Franciscan friars who brought Catholicism to the Yucatán. Founded in 1549, its huge atrio , or courtyard, was designed to hold great crowds of Mayans in open-air Masses.

The first cathedral completed in mainland America was built by local conquistadores in a style that the church leaders considered far too extravagant. The design is, in fact, quite simple, with few decorative flourishes, and the church’s soaring white stone interior has great solemnity. The figures that you pass on the way in, flanking the imposing main entrance, represent saints Peter and Paul (see Cathedral).

Built for the Jesuit Order and completed in 1618, the Jesús has a gilded Baroque interior that contrasts strikingly with the simplicity of the Franciscan churches. On the exterior, look out for traces of carvings on some of the stones – they were taken from Mayan temples (see Calle 60).

This large church with a very Spanish-looking plain façade was built as part of a major Franciscan friary in 1640. It was the last occupied monastery in Mérida, and closed only in 1857. Behind the church, some of the former monastery buildings now house a school of architecture.

The church of “The Nuns” was built in the 1590s as a chapel for one of the first closed convents in the Americas. The castle-like mirador, or watchtower, with its unusual loggia (covered balcony) was built so that the nuns could take the air without leaving the convent. Sombre metal grills inside the church recall the separation that was kept between nuns and lay worshippers.

The first of all the Franciscan missionary monasteries in the Yucatán, consecrated in 1549, was built very simply, with a massive stone façade and cavernous cloister. Set within the façade was an external altar or “Indian Chapel,” so that open-air services could be held in the square. In 1562, after the Franciscans discovered that many Mayans were practising their old religion in secret, an auto da fé was held in the square, during which the friars burned hundreds of Mayan manuscripts and pagan relics(see Maní).

Completed in 1692, this huge yet finely proportioned church was built in a lighter style than those of the early Colonial period. The churches at Teabo and Oxcutzcab are similar (see Teabo).

Mérida and Campeche began their cathedrals around the same time, but the stop-start construction at Campeche meant that while the central façade was finished in the 1600s, the tower on its left was added only in the 1750s, and that on its right as late as the 1850s.

Campeche’s churches are generally more colorful than those of Mérida and central Yucatán. San Roque is an extravagant example of Mexican Baroque, with an opulent altarpiece surrounded by intricate white plasterwork.