This was our last day in Antigua and I was somewhat sad to go home. The hotel itself was a sheltered haven from the outside world. I found myself looking forward to each evening as the myriad of lit candles lent the place an air filled with history, holiness and mystery. My favorite was the hotel’s religious history. As if the place could not get any better, it houses several museums. The Colonial Museum contains works produced during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries into the beginning of the 19th century. Among the displays are religious paintings, wooden sculptures in the form of angels, saints, and more and also silver pieces such as lecterns, chalices, and monstrances. My second favorite was their Archeology Museum. It contains an ancient treasure trove of ceramic and stone objects in the form of vessels, thuribles, and other ceremonial items found from the Classic Period of the Mayan Culture, from 200 to 900 AD. An oft overlooked small Pharmacy Museum was fascinating, with porcelain, glass, marble, and bronze pieces that were once part of private collections and of course were used to store medicinal products. Once again I will confess I absolutely detest modern art, so I cannot write anything about the contemporary “artist” halls other than I found them incongruous — much like I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid that decimates the old beauty of the Louvre. Fortunately my husband feels the same way so we did not spend any time on it. Lastly, we visited their Silver Museum which contains samples of the Sacatepequez arts and old handcrafted traditions of the region’s people. The picture I chose is a simple one. But it is how the whole place looked every night; old stone basins full of rose petals in water that glistened from the candlelight. American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edith Wharton once said:
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
Antiqua, Guatemala for me was both.
