Seasons
Holy Week in Antigua Guatemala, and the carpets laid for the processions
In Antigua Guatemala, families spend the night before a procession laying carpets of coloured sawdust and flowers across the cobbles. By the next evening the procession has walked over them, and they are gone.
By Walter Pellow2 November 20264 min read
The carpets are the thing. In the small hours before a procession in Antigua Guatemala, families and neighbours kneel in the street outside their houses and lay alfombras: long rectangles of dyed sawdust, sifted through stencils into patterns of doves, chalices, crosses and Maya motifs, edged with flowers, pine needles and fruit. Some are a few metres long; some run for a whole block. They take hours to make, and they are made to be destroyed. When the procession comes, the bearers walk straight over them, and the sweepers following behind clear what is left.
Nothing else in Guatemala's year is quite like it, and the country knows it. In 2022 UNESCO added Holy Week in Guatemala to its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, naming the processions, the vigils, the funeral marches, the food of the season and the making of the carpets.
The city and the season
Antigua is a good stage for it. It was the capital of the Spanish kingdom of Guatemala for more than two centuries, laid out in a grid of cobbled streets in a valley ringed by volcanoes, with the cone of Agua standing over the southern end of town. In 1773 a series of earthquakes wrecked the city, and the capital was moved away; Antigua was left with its churches and convents half ruined, which is much of its beauty now. The whole town is a World Heritage Site.
Holy Week, Semana Santa, is the climax of a season that begins on Ash Wednesday. Processions go out on the Sundays of Lent as well as through Holy Week itself, so the weeks before Easter all have something, and the carpets and crowds build towards Good Friday. The processions are run by the town's brotherhoods and churches. Dozens of men in purple robes carry each great float, the anda, on their shoulders, swaying slowly to the music of a brass band behind; women carry the floats of the Virgin; and on Good Friday the purple gives way to black.
Easter moves, so check the year. In 2027 Palm Sunday is 21 March, Good Friday 26 March and Easter Sunday 28 March, so Holy Week falls entirely in March. In 2028 Easter is later, on 16 April.
The carpets take hours to make, and they are made to be destroyed.
How to see it
The practical advice is the same every year. Antigua is full for Holy Week, with visitors from Guatemala City as well as abroad, so rooms go early and prices rise. Each brotherhood publishes its route and timetable, and the processions take many hours to pass through the town, so it is easier to choose a street and wait than to chase one. The carpets are best seen in the hours before the procession arrives, when they are finished and still whole, and the making of them is worth staying up for.
It is a religious occasion, first and last. Stand back from the carpets, never step on one, and don't cross in front of a float.
Tours that start in Antigua
None of the holidays in our list is dated to Holy Week, so a trip in Lent means arriving early or adding days. But Antigua is where many tours of Guatemala begin or end, and a few days there, even outside Holy Week, show the town's churches, ruins and the volcanoes on every horizon.
G Adventures' eight-night Highlights of Guatemala takes in Antigua, Lake Atitlán and Panajachel on its shore, the market town of Chichicastenango, Semuc Champey and Lanquin in the green hills of Alta Verapaz, and Flores and the Maya city of Tikal in the north. It departs in January, February, March, November and December.
G Adventures' eight-night Solo-ish Guatemala, for people travelling on their own, follows a similar line: Antigua, Lake Atitlán and Panajachel, Tikal and Flores, then Finca Paraíso and the Rio Dulce. It departs in January, February, March and December.
For a longer journey, G Adventures' sixteen-night Basic Central America: Guatemala to Costa Rica begins in Antigua Guatemala and crosses the isthmus by way of El Tunco in El Salvador, León and Granada in Nicaragua, the island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua, and La Fortuna and Monteverde in Costa Rica. It departs in January and December.
If you can, spend one Lent Sunday in Antigua, even if Holy Week itself is out of reach. The carpets are smaller and the crowds thinner, but the floats go out, the bands play, and the town's oldest custom is there to see.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
