By Ines Keane
Four dates tell most of the story: 1633, 1663, 1685 and 1704. The first three are sacks of the port. The last is the year the wall was finished. Wikipedia says the city faced pirate attacks for almost 160 years, and that fortification work began in 1686 and was completed in 1704. That sequence frames the rest of the old center.
Where it is
San Francisco de Campeche sits on the shore of the Bay of Campeche, in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Wikipedia. It is the seat of Campeche Municipality and the capital of the state of Campeche. Because of its position, the same article says, it became the main port of the Yucatán Peninsula and a point of contact with foreign traders.
What the port sold
From early times, Wikipedia says, Campeche exported logwood, called palo de Campeche or “dye stick”, and salt. The port was also known for its shipyards. Logwood has a piece of its own on this site, because the dye and the town are linked by more than a name. In 1616, the article says, the mayor of Yucatán, Luis de CĂ©spedes y Oviedo, created a license for cutting and trading logwood as an anti-piracy measure, and the page says this measure increased piracy. In 1629, Felipe IV created a navy coast guard to protect trade, and the page says that also failed to stop it. We give both statements as the article gives them.
Dates in order
- 1517: the first Spanish expedition to reach Campeche, led by Hernández de Córdoba, according to Wikipedia.
- 1531: Francisco de Montejo founds “Salamanca de Campeche”, according to Wikipedia.
- 1540: San Francisco de Campeche founded on the site of the Maya city of Can Pech, according to Wikipedia.
- 1616: logwood license, according to Wikipedia.
- 1629: coast guard created by Felipe IV, according to Wikipedia.
- 1633: sack of Campeche, according to Wikipedia.
- 27 January 1661: a filibuster fleet led by Henry Morgan loots two commercial frigates in the port, according to Wikipedia.
- 1663: another sack, according to Wikipedia.
- 1685: Laurens de Graaf attacks and takes the town, according to Wikipedia.
- 1686 to 1704: the fortification work, according to Wikipedia.
- 1732: the Puerta de la Tierra, the Land Gate, according to Wikipedia.
- 1762: Fort of San José el Alto built, according to Wikipedia.
- 1777: raised from villa to city; Carlos III grants its coat of arms, according to Wikipedia.
- 1999: World Heritage listing, according to Wikipedia.
The wall
The article says a French engineer, Louis Bouchard de Becour, was commissioned to unify the defenses into a single wall. The wall was 2,560 meters long and formed an irregular hexagon, with bastions at its corners and four gates for access. It then says the wall had eight bastions and names seven: Santiago, San Pedro, San Francisco, San Juan, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, San Carlos and Santa Rosa. We list the seven and do not supply an eighth.
The forts
Wikipedia describes two forts. The Fort of San Miguel was built to defend the town against pirate attacks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it is now a museum with pre-Hispanic items. The Fort of San José el Alto, built in 1762, houses a collection of boats and weapons from the period. There is a contradiction in the article. It says both forts were built before the city walls, which cannot hold if San José dates from 1762 and the wall was finished in 1704. We show both statements and settle neither.
What the listing says
The city was named a World Heritage Site in 1999 under the title “Historic Fortified Town of Campeche”, on the strength of the preservation and quality of its architecture. Wikipedia describes it as an example of a baroque colonial city with a regular grid plan, noting its high level of integrity and homogeneity. It describes the facades as colorful, with some houses showing Moorish and Spanish influences from the eighteenth century and later nineteenth-century changes. The color is a plain observation in the article. It does not say why the houses were painted as they were, and we offer no reason.
What kind of sources these are
Our only source for this page is Wikipedia, an encyclopedia anyone can edit. The article contains the two inconsistencies we flagged, the bastion count and the forts’ dates, which tells us to treat it with care. We did not find a municipal, state or UNESCO page that we could read, and we have left out opening hours, entry costs and transport for that reason. We have also left out population figures.
What we left out
We left out the detail of individual pirate attacks beyond their dates and leaders, since the article’s account is short and we would rather not embroider it. We left out what the museums hold beyond what the article states.
Roam first. Shop later.