Palacio Municipal de Mérida

The Palacio Municipal is the seat of Mérida's city council, the Ayuntamiento, on the west side of the Plaza Grande, along Calle 62 between Calles 61 and 63. Its long two-storey front of arcades, painted in pink and cream and topped by a clock tower, faces the cathedral across the square. The building was put up in 1734–1736, under governor Santiago Aguirre, when the council moved out of its first premises, a one-storey stone house next to the old Casa Real (today's Palacio de Gobierno) that also held the municipal jail. Its raised back courtyard, now the Jardín de los Compositores, is a remnant of a Maya pyramid known as Bakluum-Chaam that stood on the site before the Spanish city.

The building has been reshaped many times. It was rebuilt in 1856–1859, when it had 24 rooms and five two-storey galleries. Between 1870 and 1872 a small tower was added for the city's first public clock, replaced by another clock in 1919. In 1900 part of the upper floor became the council chamber, the Salón de Sesiones, still used for that purpose. National celebrations such as the 16 September Independence festivities were held here until the new Palacio de Gobierno opened in 1892.

The façade you see today dates from 1928, when, after a public competition, the architect Carlos M. Castillo Montes de Oca remodelled the front, replaced the iron railings of the upper gallery with stone balustrades, added the national coat of arms and built the present clock tower. In 1949 an 18th-century carved stone portal, rescued from a house being demolished on Calle 58, was set at the main entrance. In 1959–1961 the building gained its stone staircase, and in the 1980s the oldest known coat of arms of Mérida, once on the eastern wall of the vanished Ciudadela de San Benito, was mounted on its landing. Every Monday evening the Palacio Municipal hosts a free vaquería, a show of jarana, the traditional dance of Yucatán.