Guatemala City

Guatemala City is the capital of Guatemala, set in a mountain valley of the central highlands, ringed by volcanoes. Its full name, La Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, recalls the older capital that it replaced. The mounds of Kaminaljuyú, a Maya city that traded jade and obsidian for more than a thousand years, rise among its western districts.

Spain moved the capital of the Captaincy General of Guatemala to the Valley of the Hermitage in 1776, after earthquakes ruined Santiago de los Caballeros, now the town of Antigua. The new city was laid out on a grid around a main square, with the cathedral on its east side. Central America declared its independence from Spain in the city in 1821. Guatemala City became the capital of the Federal Republic of Central America and later of the Republic of Guatemala. The National Palace, faced in green stone, was built on the main square in the 1940s.

Cervecería Centro Americana brews Gallo, the beer with a rooster on its label, and Pollo Campero began in the city as a fried chicken restaurant and now has restaurants across the Americas and Spain. Cementos Progreso makes cement and building materials and has its headquarters in the capital.

The Metropolitan Cathedral, built in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, faces the National Palace across the Plaza de la Constitución. The Popol Vuh Museum at the Francisco Marroquín University shows Maya pottery, jade and painted vases. The Ixchel Museum of Indigenous Dress keeps woven huipiles and other textiles from the Maya communities of the highlands. Kaminaljuyú is now an archaeological park, where tunnels lead to the adobe platforms of the old city.