2 Best Sights in Mérida, Yucatán and Campeche States

Whether or not the Grand Museum of the Mayan World lives up to its lofty name depends on your tastes and expectations, but the institution certainly makes a big architectural splash. The starkly modern building was designed to resemble a giant ceiba tree, sacred to the Maya, and it looms over the northern outskirts of town on the highway to Progreso. (Plan on a MX$150 Uber or DiDi ride from downtown.)

The museum's amazing collection of Maya artifacts are exhibited in four themed halls: The Mayab, Nature, and Culture; Ancestral Maya; Yesterday's Maya; and Today's Maya. Much of the space is given over to multimedia presentations, including interactive screens that are enormously popular, especially with younger visitors. One all-the-rage panel of screens, for instance, lets you tap in your birth date, convert it to the corresponding date on the Maya calendar, and email yourself your Maya horoscope. Everything here—artifact labeling and multimedia narration—is trilingual (Spanish, English, and Mayan). The adjoining Mayamax theater screens films, and there is an on-site concert hall, too.

The most compelling of the mansions on Paseo de Montejo, this stately residence was built for General Francisco Cantón between 1909 and 1911. Designed by Enrique Deserti, who also drew up the plans for the Teatro Peón Contreras, the building has a grandiose air that seems more characteristic of a mausoleum than a home: there's marble everywhere, as well as Doric and Ionic columns and other Italianate Beaux-Arts flourishes. It now houses the Museo Regional de Antropología de Yucatán which focuses mostly on Maya history, art, and culture and sometimes other aspects of Yucatecan life. The exhibitions are generally excellent although signage is often only in Spanish, or Spanish and Mayan.