Mexico's golden city — a Mayan pyramid under a colonial convent, every wall painted the same burning ochre
Izamal is a Pueblo Mágico in the Yucatán known as the 'Yellow City' — an entire town painted in vivid ochre in honour of Pope John Paul II's 1993 visit. The Convento de San Antonio de Padua (1553) was built directly on top of a demolished Mayan pyramid, its massive atrium courtyard — one of the largest in the Americas — still sitting on the original Mayan platform. The Kinich Kakmó pyramid, dedicated to the sun god, is one of the largest Mayan structures by volume in the Yucatán and rises above the rooftops at the town's centre.
Izamal was one of the most sacred Mayan pilgrimage centres — dedicated to Itzamná, the supreme Mayan deity, and Kinich Kakmó, the sun god whose pyramid was so large it could be seen from across the flat Yucatán plain. When the Spanish friar Diego de Landa arrived in the 1540s, he demolished the main Mayan temples and used their stones to construct the Convento de San Antonio de Padua on top of the Ppapp Hol Chak pyramid — a deliberate theological act of replacement. The yellow colour was applied citywide in 1993 for the papal visit and has been maintained as the town's signature identity ever…