Colonial comeback for Campeche: with the restoration of its unique architectural legacy and a revitalized cultural life, this port city on Mexico's Gulf Coast is once again bustling.

• Author: Murphy-Larronde, Suzanne

From a privileged location overlooking Campeche's historic central plaza, the sprawling Casa Senorial sat silent and brooding under a scorching tropical sun. Decades of benign neglect, abetted by relentless doses of Gulf Coast humidity, had conspired to topple its tile roof and corrode lacy grillwork on the four windows of its elegantly proportioned facade. Deep within its decaying interior, a tangle of trees and vines had taken possession of the spacious, arcade-flanked patio, uprooting pavers and enveloping the cistern and carved Tuscan columns in a mantle of lush vegetation.

The year was 1990 and to the casual passerby, the forgotten colonial mansion appeared to have been sentenced to a slow death by deterioration. But today, a little over a decade later, the centuries-old casona on Campeche's Plaza de la Independencia has made a brilliant comeback. Thanks are owed to an ambitious government-sponsored program aimed at restoring this walled city's striking ensemble of Caribbean-style civil and military architecture. Carefully refurbished in accordance with period photographs to resemble its last remodeling of the 1930s, the handsome brick-red building has found itself a new identity as a thriving cultural center and tourist attraction called Casa Seis (so named for its address on Calle 57), while basking in the city's recently conferred status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

This bay-side capital, which, at 250,000 inhabitants, is the principal population center of Campeche state, was founded in 1540. Life for Casa Seis, the probable residence of conquistador and settlement founder Francisco de Montejo y Leon the Younger, began soon after, according to Tomas Nava, one of the museum's knowledgeable young guides. From its front-row seat near the busy waterfront wharves, the single-story dwelling, witnessed Campeche's roller-coaster ride of a history beginning with the colonial-era boom years when the port ranked in commercial clout with the likes of Havana and Cartagena, and marauding pirates and corsairs regularly sacked its treasures, assaulted its citizens, and set fire to its buildings. Independence from Spain in 1821, the abolition of slavery, and increasing marginalization from the rest of Mexico plunged the region into an extended economic decline. In the 1950s, the discovery of offshore oil, coupled with the growth of fishing and timber industries and improved communications, reversed the downward spiral, but by then many old...