The cathedral's first incarnation began in 1545, assembled from rubble salvaged from a destroyed settlement in the Almolonga Valley. Frequent earthquakes kept undermining the work for more than a century. On April 7, 1669, the temple was demolished, and a second sanctuary rose under the direction of Juan Pascual and Jose de Porres, consecrated in November 1680. The Porres family would become synonymous with the building: after the 1717 San Miguel earthquake, Diego de Porres -- likely a relative -- repaired the vaults, arches, dome, and facade. By 1743, the cathedral had been elevated to Metropolitan status, with elaborate festivities in February 1745. A pallium was transported from Europe through Veracruz to mark the occasion, and the clergy, city council, and distinguished neighbors rode out in mule-drawn carts to receive it. The grandeur would not last. The earth was already preparing its reply.

The 1773 earthquakes -- known as the Santa Marta earthquakes -- shattered the city of Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala. The cathedral suffered catastrophic damage. By November 1779, ecclesiastical operations had relocated to Guatemala City, and the parish church of El Sagrario followed in May 1780. The altarpieces, furniture, and instruments remained behind initially, but in 1783 they were removed and stored in the University of San Carlos building across the street. The gigantic walls still stood, but the interior found a grimmer purpose: it became a cemetery. The building that had held ivory apostles now held the dead.

In 1804, Archbishop Penalver y Cardenas established the Parish of El Senor San Jose, consolidating three provisional parishes that had been operating in damaged churches across the city. Two years later, a priest named Rafael Jose Luna proposed something audacious: why not use the ruins of the old cathedral itself? The ecclesiastical chapter took eight years to agree, finally accepting in 1814. Remodeling began in 1819 -- the ruined bell towers came down -- then stalled, not resuming until 1832. When the work was finally complete, the Parish of San Jose moved into the surviving portion of the cathedral, where it has remained ever since. What had been the grand entrance and the southern bell tower became a modest but functioning church, carved from the bones of its predecessor.

The cathedral absorbed yet another devastating blow on September 3, 1874 -- an earthquake The New York Times called the most destructive recorded anywhere that year. Gangs armed with knives tried to rob survivors in the chaos, until government forces under General Justo Rufino Barrios captured and executed them. The bell towers, already damaged, finally collapsed. When National Geographic correspondent Herbert J. Spinden visited in 1918, after earthquakes had struck Guatemala City, he described entering through a side door into the ruined main nave, where pillars remained "richly adorned with angels and labyrinth-shaped reliefs." Vegetation had colonized the rooftop beams between the egg-shaped domes. Then came February 4, 1976: a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that devastated Guatemala once more, damaging the surviving structure yet again. Three years later, UNESCO declared Antigua Guatemala a World Heritage Site -- preserving what the earthquakes had not yet taken.

The cathedral today is two places at once. The Parish of San Jose operates in its small surviving section, hosting Holy Week celebrations each spring with carpets of colorized sawdust and decorations of fruit and flowers. Behind the active parish, the ruined nave stretches into open sky, its massive walls framing empty space where the dome once stood. Visitors walk from a functioning church into a rootless cathedral in a matter of steps. The transition is the story itself: nearly five centuries of construction, destruction, and stubborn renewal on a landscape that has never stopped moving. The ivory apostles are gone, the tortoiseshell columns dismantled, the pallium long since relocated. But the walls remain, and inside them, worship continues.