Cathedral

On the east side of the Plaza de Armas stood the great Catedral, inaugurated on Nov. 5, 1680, after eleven years of construction. This huge building replaced an earlier cathedral begun in 1542 and worked on intermittently for many decades. Various notables from the Conquest were buried here: Bernal Diaz del Castillo, conquistador and author of The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, lived out his latter days in Antigua and was buried in the original cathedral; the remains of the Don Pedro de Alvarado, the conquerer of Guatemala, were brought here in 1568 for re-interment.

The present day church is a reconstruction of a small portion - only as far back as the first two bays- of the front of the cathedral. This reconstruction was completed in the 1820s, when the cathedral was converted into a parish church. The present façade differs only in minor ways from that shown in a 1784 sketch of the cathedral, and the lower story is very likely much as it was when first completed in 1680. The gloomy but impressive ruins of the giant nave can be entered today from the south portal, and are well worth the modest admission charge.