Santa Rosa de Copán

The town began on 8 August 1705, when the Spanish captain Juan García de la Candelaria acquired the land then called Los Llanos from the crown and set up an estate of four ranches. Settlers named the place Santa Rosa, after St Rose of Lima. Indigo, cattle and above all tobacco made it prosperous: in 1765 it was chosen as the site of the Real Factoría de Tabacos, the crown's tobacco monopoly factory, whose building was completed in 1796, and the tobacco boom drew settlers from Comayagua, Gracias and other towns. The first cathedral was finished in 1803, and the town became a municipality as Los Llanos de Santa Rosa.

After independence it was on several occasions the capital of the State of Honduras, and in 1865 it was renamed Santa Rosa de Copán. The old tobacco factory building was given over to a college in 1874 and later to a university. Earthquakes in 1877 and 1915 damaged the cathedral, which was partly rebuilt in its baroque style; its repair coincided with the founding of the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán in 1916.

The twentieth century brought a municipal market in 1912, an airstrip in 1934 used by the first national airlines and air mail, and a long role as the administrative and commercial centre of the west. The town was attacked by rebel forces during the civil war of 1919. Today its historic centre, with neoclassical buildings and cobbled streets rooted in the tobacco wealth of the eighteenth century, is protected as a Honduran national monument.

Tobacco is still the town's emblem. Premium cigar tobacco is grown in the surrounding countryside, and the La Flor de Copán factory in the city rolls cigars by hand, carrying on a trade begun under the Spanish crown. The town also has a strong sense of itself as the cultivated capital of the west, and since the 1980s it has held the Juegos Florales, a literary competition judged by a permanent commission, as part of its patron-saint fair, along with dances in the town's social halls.

Religious life is centred on the cathedral, seat of a diocese since 1916. In Holy Week local artists lay carpets of coloured sawdust on the streets for the processions, one of the town's best-known traditions. Football is followed closely: the local club, Deportes Savio, plays at the municipal stadium in Miraflores.

People in the west are known as reserved and courteous. The central park is the town's meeting place, where people sit on the benches and women sell fresh-cut pineapple and street snacks.

The city has about 62,000 people, by a 2023 calculation, making it the largest and most important town in western Honduras and the governmental hub of Copán department. Its government offices also serve people from the neighbouring departments of Ocotepeque and Lempira.

Commerce is the main urban occupation, and the town is a market for the farms around it, which grow tobacco, coffee, basic grains and citrus. Tobacco for premium cigars remains a staple of the local economy, and local businesses are also building up tourism, helped by the town's position between the ruins of Copán and Gracias and Celaque.

Most daily life happens within a few blocks of the central park, where hotels, restaurants, banks and bars are concentrated, while the market district of Santa Teresa fills up on weekends with farmers selling produce. The town bus loops between the terminal at the bottom of the hill and the centre, and the highway carries steady traffic to San Pedro Sula and the borders.

Santa Rosa eats the food of the western highlands, with a few sweets and drinks of its own. Local dishes include dulce de plátano, a sweet made from plantain; torrejas, a kind of French toast; ayote en dulce, squash cooked in sugar; tamalitos de elote, made from fresh corn; and totopostes, a hard maize bread. Ticucos, corn masa with beans and a hard-boiled egg wrapped in a husk, are sold in the park, and baleadas are served all over town.

The drinks are a point of local pride. Copán Dry is a fruit-flavoured soft drink made in the town and sold in small glass bottles. Atol de piña, made from pineapple and corn, chilate and other maize drinks are traditional, and coffee grown on the surrounding hills is served everywhere. The Honduran beers Salva Vida, Port Royal, Imperial and Barena are drunk ice-cold in the town's bars.

The municipal market and the weekend farmers' market in Barrio Santa Teresa sell fruit, vegetables and produce from the farms of the area.