🇬🇹 Guatemala · Highlands and central region
Quetzaltenango —Xela to everyone— is Guatemala's second city and the undisputed capital of the western highlands. Unlike Antigua, which is given over to tourism, Xela is a real, living and deeply Guatemalan city: a mountain town at over 2,300 metres, with a cool climate, a handsome historic centre of neoclassical, European air, and a strong identity blending K'iche' Maya heritage with criollo culture and regional pride. It's a city to live in rather than to tick off as a tourist, and part of its charm lies precisely there.
Its name says it all: 'Quetzaltenango' means, from the Nahuatl, 'place of the quetzals'; but people call it by its K'iche' name, Xela, short for Xelajú. That double identity —Maya and mestizo— runs through the whole city and its region. Xela has an elegant old town around Parque Centro América, with its cathedral, its shopping arcade, its columned buildings and its Teatro Municipal, an inheritance of the prosperity coffee brought in the late 19th century. And all around it, a fascinating highland landscape of volcanoes, crater lagoons, hot springs and indigenous villages with their markets.
This guide covers Xela with a practical and warm eye: what to see in its historic centre, what trips to take in the highlands (hot springs, volcanoes, lagoons, markets), how to get here and get around, where to eat and sleep, and why it's one of the best places in the country to learn Spanish or, simply, to see a more authentic side of Guatemala. Xela is the gateway to a spectacular and little-visited highland region, and a city with a character of its own that wins over anyone who gives it time.
Quetzaltenango is the heir of Xelajú (or Xelajuj Noj), an important K'iche' Maya settlement in the western highlands. The region was part of the powerful K'iche' lordship, whose capital lay at Q'umarkaj (Utatlán). According to tradition, it was on the plains near Xelajú that, in 1524, the decisive battle took place between the K'iche' and the Spanish conquistadors led by Pedro de Alvarado, in which the K'iche' hero Tecún Umán died, today a national symbol. After the conquest, the Spanish founded on top of Xelajú the town of Quetzaltenango (a name of Nahuatl origin, 'place of the quetzals', given by Alvarado's Mexican allies), and the region was evangelised and organised as part of the Kingdom of Guatemala. Through the colonial period and the early republic, Quetzaltenango grew in importance as the centre of the west. In 1838, in a singular episode, the region tried to constitute itself as an independent state, the short-lived State of Los Altos, with Quetzaltenango as its capital, later reincorporated into Guatemala by force. In the late 19th century, the coffee boom turned Xela into a prosperous and cultured city, which filled with neoclassical, European-looking buildings and lived a golden age. An earthquake in 1902 and the eruption of the Santa María volcano that same year caused great damage, but the city was rebuilt. Today Xela is the country's second city and the great centre of the western highlands, proud of its dual Maya and mestizo identity. The full history is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Some cities carry two names because they carry inside them two histories that never quite fused. Quetzaltenango is one of them: to the state and the maps it is Quetzaltenango, a Nahuatl place name brought by the conquistadors; to its people it stubbornly remains Xela. And that stubbornness has deep roots. Before it was Quetzaltenango, the city was Xelajú, an important K'iche' Maya settlement in the western highlands of Guatemala. Its full name, Xelajuj Noj, is interpreted in various ways, often associated with the idea of 'under the ten hills' or related to the number ten and the mountains ringing the valley. From it derives the affectionate 'Xela' that Guatemalans still use for the city today, reclaiming its indigenous root.
Xelajú formed part of the powerful K'iche' lordship, the strongest political entity in the highlands on the eve of the conquest, with its capital at Q'umarkaj (Utatlán). The region was prosperous: the valley, fertile and ringed by volcanoes, supported a substantial population devoted to growing maize and to trade, and occupied a strategic position on the routes of the west. As throughout the K'iche' world, life was shaped by a complex social organisation of noble lineages, a religion with a pantheon of deities and the sacred calendar, and frequent wars with neighbouring peoples.
That K'iche' heritage never disappeared. Despite centuries of colonisation and cultural mixing, the Xela region retains a strong Maya presence: in the highland villages around it people still speak K'iche' and Mam, wear traditional dress and keep up the ceremonies and markets. That indigenous root, interwoven with the city's mestizo culture, is one of the keys to Quetzaltenango's proud and distinctive identity.
The Xelajú region was the setting for one of the most celebrated and symbolic episodes of the conquest of Guatemala. In 1524, the Spanish forces commanded by Pedro de Alvarado, accompanied by thousands of Nahuatl-speaking Mexican indigenous allies, advanced on the K'iche' lordship. According to tradition, it was on the plains near Xelajú —in the fields of El Pinar or the Llanos de Urbina, close to present-day Quetzaltenango— that the decisive battle against the K'iche' army was fought.
Tradition places there the clash between Pedro de Alvarado and the K'iche' hero Tecún Umán, one of the lordship's great war leaders. According to the account, passed down in chronicles and traditions, Tecún Umán died in combat at Alvarado's hands in that battle. The figure of Tecún Umán came in time to symbolise indigenous resistance and, in the 20th century, he was declared a national hero of Guatemala. It should be noted that his historicity and the details of his death mix fact and legend, and are debated among historians.
After the K'iche' defeat, the Spanish consolidated their hold on the west. On the site of Xelajú a Spanish town was established, to which the Nahua allies and the conquistadors gave the name Quetzaltenango, from the Nahuatl 'place of the quetzals', probably alluding to the quetzal feathers obtained or traded in the region. Thus was born the city's dual identity: Xelajú for the Maya, Quetzaltenango for the colonial world, two names that live side by side to this day.
Through the colonial period, Quetzaltenango grew into one of the main centres of the west of the Kingdom of Guatemala. The region, evangelised and organised by the Church and the colonial authorities, prospered thanks to farming, livestock and craftwork (especially textiles, in which the region had a long tradition). The city gradually developed an identity of its own and a class of merchants and landowners that set it apart from the rest of the country.
That strong regional identity reached its peak in a singular episode after independence. When Central America broke from Spain (1821) and then organised itself into the Federal Republic of Central America, the western highland region —the 'Altos'— sought greater autonomy from Guatemala City. In 1838, the Altos went so far as to constitute themselves as a separate state within the Central American federation: the State of Los Altos, with Quetzaltenango as its capital. It was a project of the region's liberal elites, who aspired to govern themselves.
The State of Los Altos had a very brief and turbulent life. The conservative strongman Rafael Carrera, who dominated Guatemala, would not accept the separation, and over the following years the state was reincorporated into Guatemala by force (around 1840), after fighting and harsh repression. Although the autonomist dream failed, it left a lasting mark on Quetzaltenango's identity: pride in Xela as the capital of the west and the sense of being a region with a personality of its own, distinct from the capital, endures to this day.
The second half of the 19th century brought Quetzaltenango its most splendid era, thanks to a product that transformed the whole of Guatemala: coffee. After the Liberal Reform of 1871, led by Justo Rufino Barrios —himself a westerner— coffee growing expanded enormously, and the lands of the piedmont and the western highlands around Xela proved ideal for producing high-quality coffee. The city became the economic and financial centre of that thriving coffee economy.
The wealth coffee generated transformed Quetzaltenango. A prosperous and cultured bourgeoisie emerged, with a strong presence of immigrants (Germans above all, tied to coffee trading and production), who set out to give the city a modern, European image. So, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Xela filled with neoclassical buildings: the Teatro Municipal (1895), the columned and pedimented buildings of Parque Centro América, the Pasaje Enríquez, banks, stately houses. The city acquired the elegant, European air that still distinguishes it and sets it apart from other Guatemalan cities.
It was a true golden age, in which Xela felt itself a modern, cultured and cosmopolitan metropolis, the country's second city and proud capital of the west. That architectural and cultural heritage is today one of the city's great attractions, testimony to a moment of prosperity and ambition that shaped its character.
At the height of its golden age, Quetzaltenango suffered two terrible blows in the same year, 1902, which left a deep mark on its history. The first was a powerful earthquake, in April of that year, which caused serious damage in the city and across much of the west, bringing down buildings and claiming lives. The city, which had filled with beautiful buildings thanks to coffee, saw many of them damaged or destroyed.
A few months later, in October 1902, an even greater catastrophe struck: the eruption of the Santa María volcano, which rises beside the city. Until then, Santa María had had no recorded eruptions in historical times, so the event took the region by surprise. The eruption was one of the largest and most violent of the 20th century worldwide: it threw up enormous columns of ash and volcanic material that covered much of western Guatemala and neighbouring areas, ruined crops (including coffee) and caused numerous deaths, especially through the after-effects.
From that eruption there emerged, years later, on the flank of Santa María, the volcanic dome of Santiaguito, still active today and whose eruptions are one of the attractions for climbers who ascend Santa María. Despite the double catastrophe of 1902, Quetzaltenango rebuilt itself and remained the main city of the west. Those events were etched into the city's memory and are part of its history of resilience in the face of a nature as beautiful as it is dangerous.
After rebuilding from the catastrophes of 1902, Quetzaltenango went on consolidating itself through the 20th century as Guatemala's second city and the undisputed centre of the west. Today it is a university, commercial and service city, the nucleus of a region that combines highland farming (including fertile Almolonga, 'the orchard of Central America'), trade and a growing cultural and tourist activity.
Xela's identity is still shaped by the duality that has defined it from the start: the K'iche' Maya heritage, alive in the highland villages around it —with their languages, dress, markets and ceremonies— and the mestizo and criollo culture of the city, with its regional pride, its coffee past and its neoclassical air. That mix, added to the somewhat independent streak that dates back to the State of Los Altos, gives the people of Quetzaltenango a strong sense of their own identity, distinct from the capital.
For the traveller, contemporary Xela is a privileged gateway to the western highlands, one of the most spectacular and authentic regions of Guatemala: volcanoes such as Santa María and Tajumulco (the highest in Central America), hot springs such as Fuentes Georginas, sacred lagoons such as Chicabal, and indigenous markets such as San Francisco El Alto. It is also one of the best places in the country to learn Spanish and to see a less touristy, more genuine Guatemala. A mountain city, cold and proud, Xela keeps the character of somewhere that was, once, the capital of its own state.