Guatemala City

Guatemala City (Spanish: Ciudad de Guatemala) is known colloquially by Guatemalans as La Capital or Guate. Its formal name is Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción (New Guatemala of the Assumption). The latter name is derived from the fact that it was a new Guatemala after the old one (La Antigua) was ruined by an earthquake. Also, Assumption is in honor of the Virgin of the Assumption, whose festivity is 15 August, the city's feast day.

Human settlement on the present site of Guatemala City began with the native indigenous Maya people, who built a large ceremonial center at Kaminaljuyu. This large Maya settlement, the biggest outside the Maya lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula of southeast Mexico, rose to prominence around 2,300 years ago, in about 300 B.C. due to an increase in mining and trading of obsidian, a valuable commodity of volcanic glass (igneous rock) for the Pre-Columbian American civilizations in Mesoamerica. Kaminaljuyu then mysteriously collapsed around A.D. 300 for as yet unknown historical causes. …

As it is in the tropics, Guatemala City has a tropical savannah climate (Köppen Aw) bordering on a more temperate humid subtropical climate (Cwa/Cwb) due to its relatively high altitude. Guatemala City is generally very warm, almost springlike, throughout the year. It occasionally gets hot during the dry season, although not as hot and humid as other cities in Central America at sea level. The hottest month is April. The rainy season extends from May to October, coinciding with the tropical storm and hurricane season in the western Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, while the dry season extends from November to April. The city can at times be windy, which also leads to lower ambient temperatures. The city's average annual temperature ranges are 22–28 °C (71.6–82.4 °F) during the day and 12–17 °C (53.6–62. …