Exploring Antigua, Guatemala

 To get a good feel of the city we first went up a local mountain, Cerro de la Cruz, to get a good view!

zooming in on both the volcano....

 and the downtown Plaza

..... we descended by foot, at least part of the way, to explore the Plaza.......

On the south side of the Plaza is the Capitanes Generales Palace.... which used to be the site of the government offices of Central America.... until the 1773 earthquake. The facade and some of the interior space has been restored.. and there is a museum and store inside the restored space.

However as I found out on a later visit it had a lot of destroyed parts behind!

...and this notice gave me pause... there could be another earthquake while we were there!

and on the other side of the Plaza is the Palacio del Ayuntamiento or Town Hall ...this amazingly resisted most of the earthquakes...

The Cathedral de Santiago was on the third side of the square.....

The Plaza itself had an interesting fountain.... a face off to the Cathedral!

There were lots of Mayans around trying to sell to tourists.......

Antigua is full of earthquake damaged churches and we were going to visit as many as possible .....

First on the list was the destroyed Jesuit church, originally built in the 1690s

It had suffered from many earthquakes but it never recovered from the Santa Marta one in 1773, after which it was decided to move the capital to present day Guatemala City.

Then on to the ruins of the  Santa Domingo monastery, building this started in 1551......the 1773 earthquake did a lot of damage! This is now an amazing hotel...with museums on site!

And as we entered the grounds one of the close by volcanoes we had seen earlier started puffing!!

Should we shelter?!

Interesting art around the place....

It also had a great chocolate store......

and their restaurant was charming and excellent!