Key Highlights of Merida Mexico

Mérida's centre is about twelve blocks square and almost everything worth stopping for is inside it. This is the shortlist, in the order a first morning usually takes them, with what each one actually is and whether it charges.

The Plaza Grande, and the four buildings on it

The Plaza Grande is the city's square and it is unusually complete: each of its four sides carries one of the buildings the city was run from. The cathedral is on the east side, the Palacio de Gobierno on the north, the Palacio Municipal on the west and the Casa de Montejo on the south. Sit on one of the confidante chairs — the S-shaped double seats that face two people in opposite directions — and you can see all four without moving.

It is a working square rather than a monument. On Sunday it closes to traffic from 11:00, and on Monday evening the Vaquería is danced in the arcade underneath the Palacio Municipal. Both are free.

Catedral de San Ildefonso

Built between 1561 and 1598, this is the first cathedral raised on the mainland of the Americas and the oldest in Mexico. It was built with stone taken from the Maya temples of T'hó, the city that stood here before Mérida did, which is why the walls look older than the building.

The front is two square bell towers and a plain wall between them, and the interior is far barer than the outside suggests. Entry is free and it is still in daily use. On Saturday evenings the city stages the Maya ball game Pok Ta Pok on the ground in front of it.

Casa de Montejo

The house on the south side of the square was built for the family that founded the city, and its carved stone doorway is the oldest thing you will look at on the Plaza Grande. The figures above the door are conquistadors standing on the heads of the defeated — a piece of sixteenth-century propaganda left in place, in the middle of a modern city, which is a strange and useful thing to stand in front of.

The ground-floor rooms are open and free, furnished as a nineteenth-century house rather than a sixteenth-century one. On Wednesday evenings the city runs Diálogos del Conquistador here, also free.

The Palacio de Gobierno and its murals

The state government building on the north side has an open courtyard and a staircase lined with large murals by the Yucatecan painter Fernando Castro Pacheco, working through the history of the peninsula from the Maya to the henequen era. It is free, it is open late, and it is the single best thirty minutes in the centro.

Go up to the first floor. The balcony over the square is where the murals and the view meet, and it is where every walking tour stops for longest.

Paseo de Montejo and the henequen mansions

Paseo de Montejo was laid out from 1888 as a broad boulevard on the European model, running north out of the old city, and the houses along it were built with the money made from henequen — the agave fibre that rope was made from before nylon. The plantation families competed with each other and the results are still standing on both sides of the street.

It starts about eight blocks north of the Plaza Grande, which is a longer and hotter walk than it looks on a map. Take a car up and walk back down in the late afternoon.

The Monumento a la Patria

At the northern end of Paseo de Montejo, on a roundabout, sits a curved wall of carved limestone by the Colombian sculptor Rómulo Rozo, worked by hand and finished in the 1950s. It runs through Mexican history in relief, with a ceiba — the tree the Maya placed at the centre of the world — at the middle of it.

It is free, it is outdoors, and it photographs best in the last hour of light.

Gran Museo del Mundo Maya and the Palacio Cantón

Two museums, two different jobs. The Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, opened in 2012 on the northern edge of the city, is the one to see before a trip to the ruins: it sets out who the Maya were and what they built, and it is the context that makes Chichén Itzá legible. Allow two hours.

The Palacio Cantón on Paseo de Montejo is the state anthropology museum, in a mansion built at the turn of the twentieth century for General Francisco Cantón Rosado. It is smaller, it is closer to the centre, and the house is half the reason to go in. Both charge admission.

The markets: Lucas de Gálvez, San Benito and García Rejón

Mercado Lucas de Gálvez is the big one, south-east of the square, and it is at its best before eleven. Mercado San Benito adjoins it and holds most of the cooked-food counters. Mercado García Rejón is smaller, quieter and easier to walk into cold.

All three are free to walk through and all three are cash. If you would rather have someone explain what you are looking at, the food tours in Merida cross two of them between them.

The barrio plazas: Santa Lucía, Santa Ana and Santiago

Each of Mérida's old barrios has its own plaza and church, and they are where the city goes in the evening. Parque de Santa Lucía, Calle 60 at 55, has the arcade and the Thursday Serenata. Parque de Santa Ana, Calle 47, has the food stalls and is where two tour operators park their vans. Parque de Santiago, Calle 72, has the Tuesday dance and the least touristed evening of the three.

They are ten minutes apart on foot and they are all free.

What charges and what does not

Almost everything on that list is free, which is unusual for a city centre this complete. The paid part of a Yucatán trip is out of town, at the archaeological gates, and the visiting page has those figures.

Where to go next

These are the fixed points; things to do in Merida is the moving part, with the city's free evening programme night by night. If you are working out how the centro fits together, the map and distances page explains the numbered streets, and the history page explains why a Maya capital carries a Roman name.

Or start from the trips: Merida Mexico Tours lists every day out of the city with its price and its length.