Holy Week in Antigua Guatemala
Where Life Remains Old-Fashioned
FROM Guatemala City, I headed a short distance westward to Antigua Guatemala: the capital of colonial Guatemala from 1543 to 1773.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Antigua Guatemala — Antigua, for short — vies with the Mayan monuments of Tikal for the title of number one tourist must-see in Guatemala. This is because its long service as colonial capital, for 230 years, has left Antigua Guatemala full of beautiful baroque buildings and old cobblestoned streets.
The city’s graceful Santa Catalina Arch, built in the 1600s so that nuns could cross the street without having to mix the rest of the populace and later topped by a clocktower, is one of the first images that comes up when you start searching for information about Guatemala.
Here’s an aerial photograph of part of the downtown area northward from the central park, indicated on the map as Parque Central or Plaza Mayor. and the Santa Catalina Arch, indicated as El Arco de Santa Catalina. The blocks are only about 100 metres on a side for the most part, so the old part of Antigua Guatemala is very walkable.
