Amatitlán

Amatitlán on the map of Guatemala

Amatitlán is a 100,000 inhabitants city in Guatemala and the administrative seat of the homonymous municipios in the department of Guatemala. The city is located at the western end of the Amatitlán Lake, 27 km south of Guatemala City on the highway to Puerto San Jose CA 9.

As in the case of the neighboring Villa Nueva is in Amatitlán a satellite town of Guatemala City. The working population commutes mostly in the capital or work in the numerous industries that have settled along the CA Highway 9. Amatitlán is the largest free trade zone in Guatemala and has numerous textile factories ( maquilas ). Ormat Technologies operates a 28 megawatt geothermal power plant in Amatitlán. The city combines a station on the disused railway line since 2007, the Puerto San José on the Pacific with the capital and Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic.

The 204 km ² large municipality extends mountainous, crossed by several ravines south-west of the department of Guatemala. The majority of the approximately 125,000 inhabitants live in the town of Amatitlán, the remaining 25,000 in 24 smaller villages on or south-west of the lake. Thanks to the lake, some nature reserves, the Pacaya volcano and to the highway gains of tourism importance.

Adjacent Municipalities are Villanueva in the north, Petapa in the northeast of a sea, and Villa Canales in the east and south. In the southwest Amatitlán adjacent to the two municipios San Vicente Pacajá and Palín of the department of Escuintla, in the west of Santa María de Jesús, Sacatepéquez.

Amatitlán was taken on June 24, 1549 as San Juan Amatitlán by combining five older settlements. On March 20, 1680 the city to the small town ( "Villa ") was collected, the real city rights was followed on 28 August 1835. Amatitlán 1877 capital of the department of the same name. After its dissolution, the city came to the municipality in 1935 to the department of Guatemala.