Baluarte de la Soledad

The Bastion of Our Lady of Solitude is the biggest of the eight bastions on the old wall of San Francisco de Campeche. Work on the wall began in 1686, a year after the Dutch pirate Laurens de Graaf, known as Lorencillo, held the city for a month. This bastion was finished in 1692 on a narrow strip of shore near the north-west corner of the main square, right beside the Sea Gate. It is named for the Virgin of Solitude, patron of seafarers. The plan is an irregular pentagon on two levels covering about 2,344 m², with six vaulted rooms below and a military rampart on top.

By 1896 it was a ruin. During the Revolution it stored supplies for federal troops and the state government, and from 1929 it was a tenement for soldiers' and officers' families. Restoration started in 1937. It opened as an archaeological museum in 1958, became the Colonial History Museum in 1975 and the Stelae Museum in 1985, and since 2005 it has been INAH's Museum of Maya Architecture.

The pieces come from Campeche's four Maya building styles: Petén, Río Bec, Chenes and Puuc. You'll see columns, door jambs, lintels, panels and stelae from El Palmar, Hormiguero, Santa Rosa Xtampak, Edzná, Itzimté and Kankí, the portico of Xcalumkín, a stuccoed Río Bec bench that still shows red, green and blue paint, and a stone Sun Lord from Chunhuhub. The key gallery is the Calakmul room, with the jade mask and burial goods from Structure VII. In January 2026 it added Stela 46 from El Palmar: carved in the 1st century AD, it stands 3.64 m with its tenon and weighs about four tonnes.