Capital city of the State of
Yucatan is the home of trade in southern Mexico and also a tourist destination
of the utmost importance.
Long known as the White City
because of the neatness and cleanliness of its streets and people, it has been a
still is a mandatory gate for incoming and outgoing visitors.
Founded by spaniards in 1542 upon
the remains of the ancient Mayan city of Ichcaanziho, it was named Merida by the
conquistadors as it resembled the Merida of Spain.
They also thoughtlessly built
their homes, temples and official edifices using the holy carved stones from the
mayan grand constructions based on what seems today the irresponsible idea of
imposing their own culture and faith in these lands.
Whitin the kaleidoscopical mosaic
formed by the variuos regions of the country, the people of Merida outstand for
their unusual and sincere hospitality combined with the dignity and pride of
both their mayan and spanish heritage.
Merida is the ideal city for both
business and pleasure as travellers can breathe here an air of relaxation and
safety to make them feel at home. Merida graciously combines the statelines of
the old with the pragmatism of the new, the respect for tradition as opposed to
the inevitable but necessary invation of progress.
Strolling around Merida´s sites
of interest: museums, quaint parks, market places, department stores,
boutiques,curios shops and typical clothes stablishments, makes traveller wonder
whether they had not missed a whole vatiety of possibilities.
The cool evenings of Merida turn
out to be fascinating experiences: open outside cafes, airconditioned de luxe
restaurants; live serenades and concerts, discoteques, nightclubs or buggy horse
rides.
Downtown on sundays is free of
traffic and both visitors and native can walk all around, up and down, so that
he or she can get that particular piece of popular art or attend to one of many
folk shows going on.
Food is something else again, and
any day, at any time, a yucatecan dish can turn into an unforgettable pleasant
experience. A city tour may wishly start in the zocalo with a visit to the
Gobernment Palace and its famous murals.
Also a House of Montejo, founder
of the city, whose facade with a portico built of carved stone might be the most
important monument of the XVI century civil architecture of Mexico, built in the
purest plateresque tradition.
The Museum of Contemporary Art is
located at one side of the Cathedral and offers permanent exhibitions of
pictorial and other forms of art. A so called tourist corridor might
follow, walking straight on 60 street to visit Parks Hidalgo, Santa Lucia and
Santa Ana, down to Paseo Montejo Boulevard, Merida´s main avenue, flanked by
French styled old chateaux which mutely tell of the grandeur of the henequen
boom in Yucatan at the end of the nineteenth and early the twentieth centuries.
Other places of interest are the
Palacio Canton, the Ermita (chapel) of Santa Isabel, the zoo of the Centenario,
as also some of the XVII haciendas in the surroundings.
Lodging in Merida is prepared to
satisfy all: clean, economical inns, luxurious hotels, travel agencies, car
rentals, busses, guided tours to the archaeological zones, and restaurants are
readily available.
