GUATEMALA – The Holy Week in Antigua

by | 16 Jun 2017 | Cities, Guatemala, On the Panamerican road | 0 comments

Date de dernière mise à jour : le 26 July 2018

We were saying it here, we loved Antigua! This town has a splendid architecture and it is nice to live in: freshness and sun, hike and urban walk. On the top of our list!

More than as colonial city, Antigua is also known for its Easter celebrations.

Fortunately, we were there during Lent and Holy Week preparation.

In two words, this is for Christians the week before Easter and commemorating the Passion of Christ (the events around Christ death) then his resurrection on Easter day.

Then, during the 40 days of Lent (which starts the Ash Wednesday after Fat Tuesday and ends by Holy Week), processions are made every week-ends.

All processions passes on flower carpets made by the habitants in front of their house.

And everybody is participating: men, women, children. Never mixed between men and women (each has his own cross), processions are organized by themes, with paths changing through the town and duration that can change from few hours to almost 24 hours!

A Sunday morning, we set the clockwork and went to see the departure of one of the biggest Lent procession, which started at 6AM and was supposed to end at 10PM.

But it was the planning on paper.

In reality, they took some late on we finally met them at 10PM near the police campground where we were sleeping, with still few hours to walk!

The carriers are relaying and they generally do not participate to the procession all the day. Each of them has a label with his rank and his timeline. But we understood that some of them follow the procession from the start to the end…

Probably with a good feet and back pain the day after that!

So we were very pleased to take place in these events… And we probably ended these days with hundred of pictures each!

But, for you, we made a good sorting. Here is our story in pictures of the preparation of the Semana Santa in Antigua:

guatemala antigua semana santa semaine sainte holly week people gens

 

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