Izamal

History

People were living at Izamal by about 750 BC, and it grew into one of the major Maya cities of the northern plains, built with huge rounded stone blocks and linked to other centers by raised white roads called sacbés. Tradition credits its founding to the Chanes, later known as the Itzá, who came from Bacalar around AD 550 with the priest Zamná, afterward revered as the god Itzamná. The city was partly abandoned in the Postclassic period but stayed an important pilgrimage site devoted to Itzamná and the sun god.

After the conquest, an encomienda was established between 1543 and 1549. The Franciscans built the convent of San Antonio de Padua on top of the Pap Hol Chak pyramid using its stones, finishing in 1561; its atrium has 75 arches. Bishop Diego de Landa lived here, directed work on the convent and brought the image of the Virgin from Guatemala.

Cattle haciendas around Izamal turned to henequen after 1850, and the fiber sustained the region for more than a century. Izamal became a villa in 1823 and a city in 1841, lost that rank in 1923 and regained it in 1981. When henequen declined in the 1960s, authorities turned toward tourism; a mayor of 1959 to 1961 had the facades cleared of signs and painted yellow and white. Pope John Paul II visited in 1993 and crowned the Virgin. In 2002 Izamal became Yucatán's first Pueblo Mágico.