Campeche Travel Guide

Castillo de San Jose (Fuerte de San Jose) is an 18th-century coastal redoubt on the hill above the Bellavista quarter of Campeche, Mexico, part of the city's harbour defences and one of its two seaside forts alongside Fuerte de San Miguel, raised against Caribbean pirate raids. It looks down over the Gulf of Mexico, the docks and the painted old town from yellow-washed walls, and is among the most photogenic monuments in Campeche. Inside is the Museo de Arqueologia Subacuatica, with artefacts recovered from cenote dives, underwater caves and shipwrecks along the coast; the Mirador de Campeche viewpoint next door gives the better panorama. The fort forms part of the fortified ensemble of the Historic Centre of Campeche, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.

The Campeche Archaeological Museum stands inside the walls of this pirate-defended old city and gathers the best of Campeche's Maya heritage — especially objects from nearby sites like Calakmul and Edzná. Stone sculpture, jade, tomb masks and reconstructions dominate the halls, preparing visitors for the rainforest kingdoms before they head out to the ruins themselves.

The Fuerte de San Miguel sits on a hill south-west of Campeche city, completed in the 1770s as the largest work in the port's defences against pirates. Square in plan with bastions at the corners, it keeps its dry moat, drawbridge and gun positions still trained on the Gulf. Inside is Campeche's Maya archaeology museum, whose greatest holdings are the jade funerary masks from Calakmul — among the finest Maya jade work — alongside ceramics and sculpture from Calakmul and Edzná.

The Plaza Principal of Campeche (also the Constitution square) is the heart of this World Heritage old town, enclosed by softly coloured colonial buildings, the cathedral and the city hall. Paved in stone with rows of palms, it fills at dusk with strolling, music-listening residents — the centre of Campeche's slow coastal rhythm.

The walls of Campeche were raised in the 17th and 18th centuries against Caribbean pirates. Originally a complete hexagon some 2.5 km around, the circuit carried eight bastions and four gates; much of it was demolished from the 19th century as the city expanded, leaving two stretches of wall, several bastions and the land and sea gates. The regular grid and colour-washed colonial houses of the old town took shape under that protection, and the historic centre was inscribed as World Heritage in 1999.

Calakmul was among the Classic Maya's most powerful city-states, hidden in Campeche's rainforest, facing Tikal across the border. Over a hundred towering temples survive; the great pyramid can be climbed for a view over an endless green sea. As a biosphere reserve it also shelters jaguars, howler monkeys and rare birds—an archaeological and primal-ecology sanctuary, little-visited and intense.