Conkal

Conkal is the seat of the small municipality of the same name, about 15 km northeast of central Mérida and part of the Mérida metropolitan area. The whole municipality covers only about 60 square kilometres of flat henequen country, and the town had 13,944 people at the 2020 census. The name comes from Maya; one common reading is "here things are sold by the score", from the words for selling and for twenty, though other authors link it to a local parasitic plant.

Before the conquest the site belonged to the Maya province of Ceh Pech. Soon after Mérida was founded, Conkal was given in encomienda to the Montejo family, and Franciscan friars began building what is described as the fourth convent on the peninsula, dedicated to San Francisco de Asís and founded in 1549. Diego de Landa, later bishop of Yucatán, lived at the Conkal convent as one of the order's definidores. After independence Conkal belonged first to the Costa district, headed by Izamal, then to Tixkokob, and it became a municipal seat in its own right in 1918.

The great stone church and former convent still dominate the town from across a broad open plaza. Since 2016 part of the convent has housed the Galería de Arte Sacro of the Archdiocese of Yucatán: seven rooms of religious objects collected from old churches around the state, including an illustrated catechism used to teach the Maya and the original papal bull from Pius X that raised Yucatán to an archdiocese. The archdiocese's historical archive is kept in the same building. Elsewhere in town you can see the arcaded municipal palace and, on the edge of town, the ruined buildings of the old railway station. The big town festival is for the Holy Cross, from 1 to 8 May.