IZAMAL

In the bright sunlight of Yucatan, the "Yellow City" of Izamal is dazzling as you enter the main plaza.
Dominated by the Basilica of San Antonio de Padua, the colonial city is the home of the patroness of Yucatan, the Virgin of Izamal.

The Basilica was built on the base of the largest of four main pyramids, a temple known as P'ap'hol-chaak, the home of Chaac.
Friar Diego de Landa wrote that he was urged with great insistence by the Maya rulers to build a monastery amid the old shrines. He continues:
"There is here in Izamal one building among the others, of such height and beauty that it is frightening..."

A symbol of the triumph of Christianity, the monastery was by far the most ambitious Franciscan building project in the Yucatan.

"The design derived its undoubted grandeur from the scale and distribution of its great spaces for processions and collective ceremonial.
The structure was flung across the land like the grandiose gesture it was: a most material testament of Landa's vision of the Church he and
his brothers were building in Yucatan."

This statue of Bishop Diego de Landa stands in front of the Basilica and acts as a traffic regulator or glorietta.
Catholicism has been embraced by the Maya, but does not replace the ancient religion and its traditional rituals.
The Mayan customs are observed, with the addition of Christianity, making for a rich religious experience.

On December 8th, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, a pilgrimage to visit the Virgin in the Basilica is followed by a walk
to the pyramid of Kinich Kak Mo -- just one example of this type of syncretic religion.