Dzidzantún

Dzidzantún is a town of 7,530 people (2020 census) in northern Yucatán, about 76 kilometers north-east of Mérida and 14 kilometers inland from its own beach village, Santa Clara. The name is usually traced to the Maya Ts'i'tsantun, read as "sprinkled stone", though locals also like the reading "what is written in stone". Before the conquest the area belonged to the province of Ah Kin Chel; a document from 1549 records an encomienda here held by Hernán Muñoz Vaquiano. From the late 19th century the town belonged to the partido of Temax, and in 1918 it became the seat of its own municipality.

The reason to come is the former Franciscan monastery of Santa Clara de Asís, founded in 1567. According to the 17th-century chronicler Bernardo de Lizana, Friar Francisco de Gadea began the works, and documents suggest the complex was finished by 1588. The church measures about 78 by 11 meters, which the historian Miguel Bretos Cisneros calls the largest single-nave church built in Mexico in colonial times, and its carved Plateresque doorway, with human and hybrid figures in stone, is unusual for Yucatán. The building has had a hard life: pirates raided the town in 1652, the vault collapsed in the early 20th century, the Indian chapel and atrium chapels were lost, and in the 1980s the nave was roofed with concrete beams.

Inside the convent, wall and ceiling paintings survive on both floors: an Assumption of the Virgin crowned by the Trinity with Saints Clare, Francis, Peter and Paul, and, behind the main altar, peacocks, big cats, crowns and Latin inscriptions. They were restored between 2011 and 2013. The sacred art can be seen during the usual hours of services, and the custodian may let you see the original altar behind the altarpiece.

Around the plaza are the municipal palace, completed in 1787, and the market, busiest in the morning and evening. The composer José "Pepe" Domínguez, author of the trova classics "Aires del Mayab" and "El Pájaro Azul", was born on Calle 21 between 24 and 22, and local artists have painted more than 200 square meters of murals on Calle 6 between 21 and 23. Hacienda San Francisco Tzacalhá, founded around 1857, is now a hotel and home to a children's choir that sings in Maya. Santa Clara's festival in August, when her image returns from a week at the port, is the town's big event; hammock weaving is the local craft.