Convento de San Antonio de Padua, Izamal

Built between 1561 and 1562 under Franciscan friar Diego de Landa on the leveled platform of Ppapp Hol Chac, a Maya pyramid dedicated to the sun god Kinich Kakmó, the Convento de San Antonio de Padua occupies one of the most direct examples in Yucatán of a colonial structure built literally atop a demolished pre-Hispanic monument. Its atrium, reached by a long ramped approach, is among the largest of any convent in the Americas, designed to accommodate mass open-air conversion ceremonies for the surrounding indigenous population. The complex combines a fortress-like church facade with an arcaded cloister and interior chapel housing the Virgin of Izamal, a statue brought from Guatemala in the 16th century that became the focus of one of Yucatán's most important Marian devotions and was the site of a papal visit by John Paul II in 1993. Diego de Landa, the convent's founder, is a deeply contested figure in Yucatán's history: the same friar who built the atrium also ordered the 1562 auto-da-fé at nearby Maní, burning Maya codices and religious objects in an act of cultural destruction still studied by historians. The convent remains an active Franciscan monastery and pilgrimage site, with restoration over the centuries focused on the church facade and cloister rather than altering the building's original colonial form.