Santiago

Santiago Atitlán sits on the southern shore of Lake Atitlán in the Guatemalan highlands, surrounded by volcanic terrain that shapes both its geography and its economic life. The town operates as a commercial and residential center, with a street grid of narrow cobblestone roads serving local trade alongside daily movement between the lake and the highland communities above it. Overhead utility lines and mixed masonry construction mark a built environment that developed incrementally rather than through any single period of planned growth.