Antigua, Guatemala:  "The situation was ravishingly beautiful, at the base and under the shade of the Volcano de Agua, and the view was bounded on all sides by mountains of perpetual green;  the morning air was soft and balmy, but pure and refreshing.  With good government and laws, and one's friends around, I never saw a more beautiful spot on which man could desire to pass his allotted time on earth."  So wrote John Lloyd Stephens, visiting Antigua in December 1839, in "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan".  We quite agree with his assessment, and the government is still working on its part, too.  And many friends are already here, while others visit from time to time.  Please come and visit us, too.

"Antigua Guatemala, the old capital, thirty miles to the westward of the new, is still a place of considerable importance, and its time was far superior to the present capital in size and appearance.  Previous to its destruction in 1773 there were but two cities on the American hemisphere which compared with it in population, wealth and magnificence.  These were the City of Mexico and Lima, Peru.  New York was then a commercial infant, Boston a mere village and Chicago yet unknown.  But here was a city in which were centered ecclesiastical and political interests of the Central American colonies, where millions of dollars were spent in erecting churches, convents and monasteries, which covered acres of ground, and beautiful residences whose shattered portals still bear the escutcheons  of the noble families who ruled the city and cultivated plantations of coffee, sugar and cochineal.

Antigua, as it now called, was not only the scene of wealth and influence, and the commercial metropolis of the country, but the home to the most learned men of all Spanish America, the seat of great schools of theology, science, and art, for two hundred years the Athens and Rome of the New World, the residence of the university, as well as the Inquisition and the headquarters of those untiring apostles of evil, the Jesuits.  The population is said to have been about one hundred and fifty thousand."

From "The Capitals of Spanish America", by William Eleroy Curtis, late Commisioner from the United States to the governments of Central and South America, New York, Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, 1888