Antigua Guatemala

Antigua was the capital of Spanish Central America for two centuries — Santiago de los Caballeros, founded in 1543 in a valley ringed by volcanoes — until the earthquakes of 1773 broke its churches and the Crown moved the government to a safer valley; the city that stayed behind, half-ruined and wholly beautiful, kept its grid, its baroque facades in ochre and yellow, its cobbles and its convents, and grew coffee on the slopes around. UNESCO listed it in 1979. The Volcán de Agua closes every southward street like a green wall, and Fuego, to the west, still smokes on schedule.

The traveller walks the grid from the Parque Central and its ruined cathedral to the yellow front of La Merced and the Arco de Santa Catalina, under which the volcano frames itself for the photograph the whole world takes; wanders the ruins that the earthquake left open to the sky, and the convent of Santo Domingo turned hotel and museum; climbs the Cerro de la Cruz for the view; visits a coffee finca on the slopes; and, with a night to spare and legs to match, climbs Acatenango to camp above the clouds and watch Fuego throw lava into the dark — the great sight of Central America.

The Guide's honesty: Antigua is Guatemala's most visited town and prices like it, with a Spanish-school, café and boutique economy that some find precious — the market, the chicken buses and the villages around are the correction —; Holy Week is the most extraordinary week of the year and needs rooms booked months ahead; the altitude, fifteen hundred metres, makes for cold nights and thin air on the volcanoes, where a guide is not optional; the cobbles are unforgiving; and the coffee, the chocolate and the light are as good as anyone has told you.