Comayagua was founded on December 8, 1537 by Captain Alonso de Cáceres, on the orders of the adelantado Francisco de Montejo, under the name Santa María de la Nueva Valladolid de Comayagua, in a valley equidistant between the two oceans. Thanks to its central position and its proximity to the silver and gold mines, it became the capital of the province of Honduras for almost the entire colonial period and the seat of the bishopric from 1561.
For more than three centuries, Comayagua was the political, religious and cultural center of the country, with its Royal House (Caxa Real), its episcopal palace, its seminary and its temples. After independence in 1821, it retained its rank as capital of the nascent Honduras for much of the 19th century, disputing it on more than one occasion with the thriving Tegucigalpa.
In 1880, however, President Marco Aurelio Soto definitively moved the capital of the Republic to Tegucigalpa, closer to the mines and more economically dynamic. That move froze Comayagua in time and, paradoxically, preserved its colonial heritage almost intact to this day.
The jewel of the historic center is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, one of the oldest churches in the Americas. Its construction began in 1563 and its final phase was completed on December 8, 1711, with an elegant baroque façade and gilded altarpieces inside. In its tower it houses an old mechanical clock of Moorish origin, made of wrought iron, brought from Spain; tradition holds that it arrived as part of the spoils of the taking of Granada in 1492 and that it originally stood in the Alhambra, which would make it one of the oldest working clocks in the world, though some historians dispute that dating.
Comayagua also preserves a notable ensemble of colonial churches: La Merced (the oldest, from the 16th century), San Francisco, La Caridad and San Sebastián, along with numerous red-roofed mansions around its central square. That ensemble makes it the best-preserved colonial city in Honduras and one of the most complete historic centers in Central America.
Its Colonial Museum of Religious Art and its Museum of Anthropology and History complete an urban center that seems frozen in the 18th century.
Holy Week in Comayagua is one of the most spectacular in the country and one of the most famous in Central America. Since 1963, on the initiative of Doña Miriam Mejía de Zapata —who learned of the tradition in Guatemala— the streets of the historic center are covered with colorful carpets of dyed sawdust bearing religious and floral motifs, made through the night by families and confraternities, over which the solemn Good Friday processions pass.
The church of San Francisco, which according to tradition opens only one day a year, on Holy Thursday, is the starting point of the Way of the Cross, and the whole city becomes a great stage of faith and ephemeral art that draws thousands of national and foreign visitors. The procession of the Holy Burial travels the carpeted streets in one of the most impressive religious scenes in Honduras.
This tradition, passed down from generation to generation, has made Comayagua's Holy Week a powerful draw for religious and cultural tourism, and one of the hallmarks of the old colonial capital.
The department of Comayagua occupies the geographic center of Honduras, in a broad valley surrounded by mountains and watered by the Humuya River, which feeds the reservoir of the El Cajón (Francisco Morazán) hydroelectric dam, one of the greatest engineering works in the country. Its fertile land made it an important agricultural and cattle-ranching zone, famous for its vegetables —Comayagua is one of the country's great vegetable suppliers— its basic grains and its high-altitude coffee.
In the department's mountains survive protected cloud forests, such as Montaña de Comayagua National Park, with waterfalls, orchids and a rich biodiversity, and Lenca communities that preserve their traditions, crafts and communal organization in the highland municipalities.
Its strategic location, on the axis linking Tegucigalpa with the north coast and the west, has made Comayagua a vital crossroads of communications throughout the country's history.
Near the city lies the former joint military base of Palmerola (Soto Cano), which during the 1980s was the main U.S. enclave in Honduras and a center of operations at the height of the Central American Cold War. On that site the Palmerola International Airport was built, inaugurated in 2021, called upon to replace the old and dangerous Toncontín airport in Tegucigalpa as the country's main air gateway.
With a modern terminal and runways capable of receiving large aircraft, Palmerola aspires to turn Comayagua into a first-rate logistics and tourism hub, taking advantage of its central position and its proximity both to the capital and to Lake Yojoa and the colonial cities of the west.
Thus the old colonial capital that was left behind by progress in 1880 looks to the future once again, combining its unique historical heritage with 21st-century infrastructure.