conquistadores standing on slave heads...a bothersome reminder of how Europeans decimated all that the Maya held as sacred. In the name of both Christianity and Colonialism...

Never-the-less, this extraordinary building, facing the zocalo in Merida, is acknowledged to be the finest civil example of the Spanish Plateresque style in Mexico or indeed in the New World.

In characteristic Spanish decorative spirit, structure received little emphasis, while doorways and other details displayed clusters of ornament against a foil of bare wall space.

Dated 1549 by an inscription, the palace was built by Francisco de Montejo the Younger, son of the Adelantado Montejo, conqueror of Yucatan