Campeche map

Layout of Campeche

San Francisco de Campeche was founded in 1540 on the Maya town of Can Pech, on the Gulf shore of the western side of the Yucatán Peninsula. It was the peninsula's only deep-water port for three centuries and the outlet for logwood, the dyewood that made the coast worth raiding. The municipality held 294,077 people at the 2020 census, in a state of 928,363 — the least populous of the three peninsular states. The city stands at about 10 m on a narrow coastal shelf, with low limestone hills immediately behind it.

Its shape on the map is set by the walls. English, Dutch and French corsairs took the town more than once in the seventeenth century, and after the sack of 1685 the crown enclosed it between 1686 and 1704 in an irregular hexagon of wall some 2.5 km round and up to 8 m high, with eight bastions and two gates: the Puerta de Tierra facing inland and the Puerta de Mar facing the water. Much of the curtain wall was pulled down in the nineteenth century, but the gates and seven bastions stand, and the hexagon still governs the street pattern. UNESCO inscribed the Historic Fortified Town of Campeche in 1999.

Inside, the streets are a tight grid of one- and two-storey houses painted in flat blocks of ochre, blue, red and white, restored to a single scheme in the 1990s. Calle 59 crosses the walled town from gate to gate and is closed to traffic for much of its length. The Plaza de la Independencia holds the cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción, begun in the sixteenth century and finished with its second tower only in the nineteenth. The Baluarte de San Carlos houses the city museum, La Soledad the Maya stelae collection, and Santiago a small botanical garden.

Landfill in the mid-twentieth century pushed the shoreline several blocks west of the Puerta de Mar; the reclaimed strip carries a malecón of about 6 km, the widest promenade in the state. Two hilltop forts stand outside the walls: San Miguel to the south-west, holding the Maya archaeology museum with the jade funerary masks from Calakmul, and San José el Alto to the north-east. Modern Campeche runs north along the coast and inland behind the hills; the suburb of Lerma to the south is the fishing and shipyard quarter. Alberto Acuña Ongay airport (CPE) is about 5 km south-east, the ADO bus terminal about 2 km from the walls on Avenida Patricio Trueba, and the Maya Train station sits on the northern edge of the city.

Distances from Campeche

Around Campeche

Edzná, 60 km inland in a shallow valley, was occupied from about 400 BC to 1500 AD and is the nearest major Maya site. Its Edificio de los Cinco Pisos is a five-tiered building with rooms on each level, and the valley floor around it carries a system of canals and reservoirs cut to hold the rainy-season water — the site has no cenote. Fewer than a hundred visitors a day come here, against several thousand at Chichén Itzá.

South, Highway 180 follows the shore to Champotón, where the Spanish under Hernández de Córdoba were beaten back in 1517, and on across the bridge to Isla Aguada and the Laguna de Términos, the largest coastal lagoon in Mexico at about 1,500 km², with Ciudad del Carmen at its mouth. North of the city the Petenes biosphere reserve protects mangrove islands fed by freshwater springs. Inland, the Camino Real towns of Hecelchakán and Becal — the latter still weaving jipijapa hats in limestone caves for the humidity — line the old road to Mérida.

Deeper south-east, past Escárcega and Xpujil, the Río Bec sites of Becán, Chicanná and Xpujil lead to Calakmul, a UNESCO mixed World Heritage property since 2002 whose reserve of 7,231 km² is the largest protected forest in Mexico. Campeche is a stop on the Maya Train, which links it north to Mérida and east to Escárcega and Chetumal. The archaeological sites map and the Gulf of Mexico map set the city in context.

Questions about Campeche

Where is Campeche on the map of Mexico?

On the Gulf shore of the west side of the Yucatán Peninsula, at 19.85° N, 90.53° W. The full name is San Francisco de Campeche. It is 175 km south-west of Mérida and the capital of the state of Campeche.

Why is Campeche a walled city?

Because corsairs sacked it repeatedly through the seventeenth century, the worst raid being the 1685 attack led by Laurens de Graaf. The Spanish crown enclosed the town in a hexagon of wall about 2.5 km long between 1686 and 1704, with eight bastions and two gates; UNESCO listed the fortified town in 1999.

How far is Campeche from Mérida?

175 km on Highway 180 along the Gulf, about two hours, or 195 km and two and a half hours on Highway 261 inland through Hopelchén and Bolonchén — the slower road, but the one that passes Uxmal and the Puuc hills.

What is there to see near Campeche?

Edzná, a Maya city with a five-storey palace, is 60 km inland. Calakmul, in the largest tract of protected forest in Mexico, is about 370 km south-east near the Guatemalan border. Champotón and the Términos lagoon lie along the coast to the south.