Quetzaltenango
— — the city the K'iche' still call Xela.
Not only on a wall.
“Guatemala's second city, at 2,330 metres in the western highlands. The locals call it Xela, the K'iche' name that predates the conquest. The dormant cone of Santa Maria closes the south side; the active Santiaguito vent breathes a slow column of ash below it. Spanish-language schools have brought a steady stream of students for forty years, but the market and the cathedral still keep highland time.
Quetzaltenango, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Quetzaltenango sits at roughly 2,330 metres in the Guatemalan western highlands, the seat of the department of the same name and the country's second-largest city with around 180,000 residents. K'iche' Maya speakers know it by the older name Xelaju, shortened to Xela. The Spanish settlement was founded in 1524 by Pedro de Alvarado after the battle in which the K'iche' leader Tecun Uman was killed. The city centre rebuilt in neoclassical stone following the catastrophic 1902 eruption of Santa Maria and the earthquakes around it.
Parque Centro America and the surrounding facades are largely the work of a rebuild that followed the 1902 eruption of Santa Maria. The neoclassical Pasaje Enriquez and the Municipalidad both date from that period and use volcanic stone quarried from nearby Cantel. The cathedral retains its original 1535 colonial facade on the front while the nave behind has been rebuilt several times. Highland masons still work the same stone, and the building line of the old centre carries that grey-warm volcanic palette throughout.
At 2,330 metres the air is thin enough that visitors from sea level notice on the first walk up Avenida 4. Mornings run cool and clear most of the dry season from November through April; afternoon clouds wrap the Santa Maria summit most days by two in the afternoon. The dormant cone reaches 3,772 metres directly south of the city, with the much younger Santiaguito vent steaming on its southwest flank. Wind in the highlands moves slowly and the city smells of woodsmoke at dusk.