Tours

La Plaza de la Constitución

Our tour begins a hundred meters from the Plaza Mayor de la Constitución, at the Mercado Central in the Plaza del Sagrario. Located behind the cathedral, the three-story market is built over what used to be the city cemetery. Here, there are many stalls selling fruit, vegetables, flowers, weavings and snacks.

Not far away, on the corner of Avenida 9 and Calle 10, is the Museo de Historia, which houses an exhibition depicting the city's history and the people who have played a part in it. It has a wealth of historical photographs, as well as furniture and valuable political documents. This is the place to go if you want to find out about the city's past since Independence in 1821. The exhibitions also cover the economy, society, and the arts. Opening hours are from 9am to 4pm.

A few blocks from the History Museum is La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, on the corner of Avenida 11 and Calle 5. It houses a fine collection of colonial paintings, as well as gilded altarpieces which were brought from Antigua to the new place of worship.

Walking northwards from the center along Avenida 6, at the corner of Calle 19 in Zone 4 you will come to what was once the Fort of San Rafael, strategically placed on a hilltop to guard the city. The Centro Cultural Miguel Angel Asturias now stands on this site, home to the opera, a chamber theater and an open-air theater built around three squares. Work began on the theatre in 1961 and finished in 1978. Shaped like a Mayan pyramid, it stands out from the rest of the Civic Centre on Buena Vista Hill and is considered one of the greatest in the world. The main auditorium is an amazing feat of architecture designed by Efraín Recinos. Used for concerts, plays, ballets, and other performances, it forms part of a complex containing open spaces, rehearsal rooms, workshops, and a conference hall seating 2068. You can visit at any time of day.

Two kilometers northeast of the center is the Cerro del Carmen, where the first church in the valley was built, dedicated to La Virgen del Carmen. This provides a little oasis of green in the midst of the growing city. From its patio you have a good view of the city center.

To the east, as you go down San Rafael Hill, you come to the Centro Cívico, which was designed and built in the 1960s and includes the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security, the Public Finance building, the offices of the Guatemalan Tourist Institute (INGUAT), the capital's municipal offices, the Bank of Guatemala, as well as an arts center. These buildings are adorned inside and out with murals, considered masterpieces of Guatemalan art, by Carlos Merida, Roberto González Goyri, and Grajeda Mena.

The Plaza Berlín at the end of the Avenue of the Americas is a wonderful place to watch the sunset over a horizon dominated by the Lake Amatítlan and the volcanoes Volcán de Agua and Volcán de Pacaya. The best time for this is at the end of the year when the blue sky is at its most intense.

The Aurora Zoo, opened in 1924, has more than 200 species of animals and a huge variety of plants and trees. It is a good place for a walk with the family, especially at weekends when the funfair is open. To avoid the crowds, choose a day from Tuesday to Friday.

At weekends the Avenida Las Americas turns into a big family outing. Its central island is full of people hiring out horses, bicycles, motorbikes and carts drawn by horses or goats for children's rides. The various shops in the main commercial areas of the city live up to modern expectations, selling local and imported clothing at reasonable prices.

La Plaza Mayor

The great metropolis of Guatemala City, with over three million inhabitants, is a meeting place for a vast variety of different customs, traditions, religious beliefs, and ways of life from all over the country. Here, cultures mix, from the traditional, conservative capital-dweller of the midlands, to the indigenous peoples of the West, the bravehearts of the East, and the notorious “garífunas” from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent.

The Plaza Mayor is a good starting point for a walk through the city. To the east is the Neo-Classical Metropolitan Cathedral, where you can contemplate a collection of religious paintings by masters such as Zurbarán, from the Spanish dark period, and pictures from Guatemala's colonial days such as “Saint Sebastian” and the “Virgen del Socorro”, brought by the Spanish conquistadors.

The Cathedral was founded in 1782 but not completed until 1867. The paintings to be found inside date from the 17th and 18th centuries. The Neo-Classical style in which it is built began with the foundation of Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción (the present day Guatemala City) and first appears in the architecture of this time. The most striking feature of the construction, which was designed by Don Marcos Ibañez, is the vaulted ceiling. The Cathedral's organ, with its profusion of golden moldings, was designed by Francisco Mariano López and his son.

To the north of the Plaza is the Portal del Comercio (Gate of Commerce), also in Neo-Classical style, which is home to a variety of businesses and street vendors' stalls. Here you can buy arts and crafts from all over the country. If you want an embroidered huipil, pottery, or craftsmanship in leather, wood, silver, or tin, this is the place to go. To the west of the Plaza is the Parque Centenario (Centenary Park), where shoe-shiners traditionally gather around the benches at the entrance to Avenida 6, to gossip about politics, economics and the news of the day.

The most imposing building in the plaza is the on the south side, which is considered one of the gems of Guatemalan architecture of this past century. Completed in 1943, its eclectic style is a mixture of colonial, French and Neo-Classical influences. Inside you can admire stained glass windows by Julio Urruela Vásquez and his colleagues Guillermo Grajeda Mena, Dagoberto Vásquez, and Roberto González Goyri, which are among the best examples of Guatemalan art from the 1940s. Today it is a museum, and in its ornate Moorish-style galleries can be found murals by Gálvez Suárez, telling the history of Guatemala. You can enter to view the building and its art collection from 9a to 5p, Monday to Friday. It is a popular attraction for tourists, students and the Guatemalan public.

You do not have to leave the capital to explore the treasures of Mayan culture. Sitio Arqueológico Kaminal Juyú in Zone 7, gives you the opportunity to see from close up how archaeological excavations are carried out. Amongst the ten mounds of earth in the middle of a field, you will find two sets of excavations by teams from the University of Pennsylvania. Named the "Hill of the Dead" by Antonio Villacorta in 1940 due to the large number of burial remains which have been found in it, Laminal Juyú is the site of a Mayan city that dates back to the Pre-Classical period. Architecturally, it has been influenced by the Mexicans of Teotihuacan, who moved down into central Guatemala around 200 AD. More recently, the site has been under threat from the constant growth of Guatemala City, which has hidden over 170 mounds under streets and houses.

A visit to the best museum of Pre-Hispanic art in Central America, the Museo Popol Vuh will prepare you for the Route of the Mayas. Forty centuries of Mayan life are summed up in the nine galleries: an introductory room, a map of Central America, a sculpture gallery, a gallery of jade objects, a room dedicated to contemporary ethnology, and rooms containing artifacts from the three major periods of the Mayan civilization, the Pre-Classical, Classical and the Post-Classical. Finally, the “Patio of Stars” is especially impressive. As well, the Pre-Hispanic Art department of the Popol Vuh has a collection of funeral urns from El Quiche and a collection of tubular incense burners rescued from the bottom of Lake Atitlán.

Parque Central

The central square of Guatemala City, with a fountain in the middle and broad avenues on all sides, has always been known as the Parque Central. On 31st May 1995 it was officially renamed as the Plaza Mayor de la Constitución in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the new constitution of the republic. Every day, the square fills with evangelists, handcraft vendors, shoe-shiners and street performers from clowns to dancers to fire-eaters, all competing for the attention of the milling crowd, and perhaps for a penny or two. There are food stalls where you can try delicious Guatemalan dishes and snacks such as loroco patties, pork crackling, cheese, beans, pumpkin, chicken, tacos, chilli tortillas, yuca with chilli, sweet pumpkin, coyoles in honey, and corn or banana atole.

To one side, across Avenida 6, is the recently built Parque Centenario. This was the site of the first Palace of the Captains General in the new Guatemala City. At the western end of the park there is an open-air theater where concerts, plays and dance performances are held on weekends.

Five minutes' walk to the north of the Parque Central, on the site of the old North Hippodrome, is the relief map. Made between 1904 and 1905 by the engineer Francisco Vela Irrisario, this is a unique and amazingly detailed three-dimensional map of the country. From the visitors' observation box you can see the hydraulic system used to simulate the flow of the country's rivers and lakes. The 108,889-square kilometers that make up the Republic of Guatemala are accurately condensed into only 1,800 square meters. To see all the rivers, volcanoes, mountains, valleys, and the coast laid out before you like this is really a stunning sight.

Nearby is the Enrique Torrebiarte baseball field, the Arturo Gálvez Sobral children's baseball field and a children's playground.

To the south along Avenida Reforma you come to the Jardín Botánico, which are kept by the Conservation Study Center of the University of San Carlos de Guatemala. A huge variety of plants and trees are to be found in this small space. Opening hours are 9am to 4pm, Monday to Friday.

Avenida La Reforma, with its broad, tree-lined meridian, is one of the main arteries of the southern part of the city, providing access to new shopping areas such as La Pradera, Gran Centro Los Próceres, and the Zona Viva, where you will find the most exclusive clothes shops and the best restaurants, surrounded by hotels.

At the southern tip of the city, near La Aurora International Airport, is the Finca Nacional La Aurora, a collection of ballrooms dating from the 1940s which have now been converted into museums.

The Archaeology Museum houses a valuable display of Mayan relics, including a large collection of Pre-Columbian jade. There are displays on the country's indigenous tribes, showing their different styles of weaving. The museum is open from 9am to 4pm Tuesday to Sunday.

Opposite, and in a similar architectural style, stands the Museo de Arte Moderno, a gallery which houses a good selection of the best in contemporary Guatemalan art, particularly painting and sculpture.

In an innovative building next door is the Museo de Historia Natural, with exhibitions on flora, fauna, mineralogy, and paleontology, including a collection of dissected animal specimens from various regions of Guatemala. There is also an ecological library for children, the only one of its kind in the country. This is on Avenida 7 in Zone 13. Opening hours are 9am to 4pm, Monday to Friday.

Guided Tour

If you want to fully experience all of Guatemala in style, check out Classic Journey's Guatemala Guided Tour, a seven-day trip throughout the country with stops at some of the most beautiful and famous sites.