Mérida

Yucatan, in the city register, is a state wearing a city's heading — the city is Mérida, the white capital of the peninsula, and the entry is flagged accordingly for the workbook. Mérida earns portraiture in its own right: founded in 1542 on the Maya city of T'hó, its cathedral — among the oldest on the American mainland — was raised from the pyramids' own stones, and the henequen boom of the nineteenth century, when the "green gold" of sisal rope made the region fabulously rich, built the Paseo de Montejo's French-dreaming mansions, a Champs-Élysées in the tropics. The Maya world remains the deeper address: the great museum of Maya civilisation anchors the city, Chichén Itzá and Uxmal lie within excursion range, and Yucatecan cuisine — cochinita pibil, sopa de lima — constitutes a sovereign cultural claim.

Musical Mérida gathers where the concert record documents it: the Orquesta Sinfónica de Yucatán, the peninsula's resident symphony, performing in the city's grand historic theatre — the record's "Teatro de Yucatan", the opera-house home whose canonical name is flagged for verification — with the weekly serenatas of Santa Lucía park keeping the trova tradition in the open air. White limestone, green gold, vaquería dances and a symphony in the tropics: Mérida performs the Yucatán, nightly and well.