Green-blue water. White-sand beaches. Posh hotels. Gourmet dining. Vibrant nightlife. This is what most visitors to Cancún travel there for. Few know that this sybaritic tourist mecca on Mexico’s northwest Yucatán coast was also once home to the Maya, as was the rest of the Yucatán Peninsula. 

Many visitors seek out the Yucatán’s best-known archaeological sites at Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Tulum, this last site about 80 miles south of Cancún, little guessing that there...

Spanish conquistadores, led by Francisco de Córdoba and, two years later, by Hernán Cortés, arrived in Mexico’s Yucatán in 1517. Following them came Catholic Spanish missionaries, particularly Franciscan friars, who made it their mission to convert the natives to Christianity. 

Not long after their arrival, these Franciscans began to build missions, monastic complexes that included not only housing for themselves but churches for the newly converted.

The religious...

Historically, what is called the “Borders” once included not only much of southern Scotland but also neighboring areas of northern England. Today, however, the Borders is just one of 32 council areas of Scotland and is located in the southeastern part of the country. Cumbria and Northumberland in northern England lie to its south and east.

The Scottish Borders has the greatest concentration of medieval abbeys — four of them — in Scotland. These four are...