🇬🇹 Guatemala
Antigua
Antigua Guatemala (formally La Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala — "The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Saint James of the Knights of Guatemala," population 46,000 in the city proper and 75,000 in the municipality — the former capital of the Captaincy General of Guatemala (1543–1776) and one of the best-preserved examples of Spanish colonial Baroque architecture in the Americas) is one of the most beautiful cities in Central America: the city that was the most important administrative, cultural and religious center of all of Central America and the southern states of Mexico for over two centuries, built in the narrow valley between three volcanoes (Volcán de Agua (3,766m — the "Volcano of Water": the stratovolcano that destroyed the first capital of Santiago de los Caballeros (the original site on the shores of Lake Atitlán) in 1541 when the water impounded in the summit crater broke through and buried the city (the "lahár" — the volcanic mudflow that destroyed a city in 1541 and caused the Spanish to move the capital to the current Panchoy Valley site)), Volcán de Fuego (3,763m — the "Volcano of Fire": the most continuously active volcano in Central America: has been in continuous eruption since 2002 and visible from the streets of Antigua as a permanent plume of smoke and periodic ash clouds) and Volcán de Acatenango (3,976m — the "Volcano of the Reeds": the highest of the three Antigua volcanoes and the base for the most popular overnight hike in Central America: the Acatenango summit hike that gives direct views of the active Fuego crater)): the 1976 earthquake (the most recent major earthquake in Antigua: magnitude 7.5, the earthquake destroyed significant parts of Antigua and much of rural Guatemala — but the historic center was rebuilt after UNESCO listing in 1979) and the most important UNESCO World Heritage site in Central America (listed 1979 — the UNESCO citation: "one of the best-preserved and most well-known examples of Spanish colonial Baroque architecture in the Americas and a living testimony of the unique fusion of European and indigenous American artistic and cultural traditions").