Trips to Guatemala

CITY OF GUATEMALA

City of Guatemala, the economic, governmental and cultural capital of the country, is in a plateau 1500 meters of altitude. All the main highways leave from kilometer 0, located inside the National Palace of the Culture, in center historical. City of Guatemala is an urban center where diverse cultures coexist, cosmopolitan ones and other traditional ones. It emphasizes his wealth folkloric, with legend like the Cadejo or the Weeping one. The city offers all the facilities and comforts for the tourist and normally are the operations center to start off for anyone of the other points of interest of the Republic.

The city has a great variety of restaurants, hotels and stores, 300 galleries and museums (including good collections of pre-Columbian art).  There are 12 universities, 11 private and one national, including the University of San Carlos of Guatemala.

With a population of 4 million inhabitants, the native city of the famous writer Miguel Asturias Angel reunites to the own dynamism of a great capital and the evils of the populated large cities.

Guate, as the Guatemalans (or chapines) call, is a city with little more than two centuries of history. The 29 of Julio of 1773 an earthquake now destroyed great part of the old capital of Guatemala (the Old one) and the colonial government decided to move to another place. The 27 of September of 1775 king Carlos III of Spain signed the authorization to found the New Guatemala of Asuncio'n.  Thus City of Guatemala, or Guate to droughts was born officially.

In City of Guatemala the National Palace of the Culture can be visited, Zoological the Aurora, the Relief map (located in the Race course of the North), the Market of Crafts (near the Airport the International “the Aurora”) and the Alive Zone.

Between the museums they emphasize the “National Museum of Archeology and Ethnology”, that an archaeological sample of the Mayan civilization presents/displays; the “national Museum of History” and the Museum of the Boy.  The Cultural Center “Miguel Asturias Angel” is also a place that contains great cultural wealth, artistic and architectonic, that in addition lodges the Museum of Arms.

Old churches that provide to the capital city a special architectonic historical touch to him, like those of the “Cerrito of the Carmen” exist, the Metropolitan Cathedral, the Calvary, the Church of Santo Domingo, the Church of Yurrita and the Church of the Favor. In the heat of capital city, is a park in which the archaeological site of Kaminal Juyú is based that, according to specialists, is a city that is buried underneath one of the most commercial areas of the city, that includes zones 7 and 11.

The city is divided in zones. Unlike other great cities, Guatemala has a square structure that expands in all the directions, important characteristic of the neoclassic urbanism of principles of century XX. The city owns many ample avenues and boulevards and scenery; like the “Avenue the Reformation”, “Beautiful Vista”, “the Próceres” among others. Their drawn up old and their location (a valley surrounded by deep precipices) causes that the main access roads are few, which causes a severe congestion of traffic.

As entertainment can be visited the Cultural District 4 North Degrees and the pedestrian streets with its commerce and cultural activities, and the Alive Zone, a sector of the zone 10 that has been constituted in center main of the nocturnal life of the city.

The points of greater interest of the city can be visited in one or two days.

Recreational activities of adventure can be practiced and: to scale volcanos of Agua and Pacaya, and to practice aquatic sports in the Lake of Amatitlán, the outskirts.