San Francisco de Campeche, 19th c. English also Campeachy, is a city in Campeche Municipality in the state of Campeche, Mexico on the shore of the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico. Both the seat of the municipality and the state's capital, the city had a population at the 2010 census of 220,389, and the municipality had a population of 259,005.
The city was founded in 1540 by Spanish conquistadores as San Francisco de Campeche atop the pre-existing Maya city of Can Pech. The Pre-Columbian city was described as having 3,000 houses and various monuments, of which little trace remains.
The city retains many of the old colonial Spanish city walls and fortifications which protected the city from pirates and buccaneers. The state of preservation and quality of its architecture earned it the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999. Originally, the Spaniards lived inside the walled city, while the natives lived in the surrounding barrios of San Francisco, Guadalupe and San Román. These barrios still retain their original churches; the one in Guadalupe is almost 500 years old.