Comayagua

Town in Honduras and administrative capital of the department of Comayagua; population (1995) 82,000. It is the commercial and distributive centre of the Comayagua valley, a rich agricultural and mining area. Founded in 1523, the town has many Spanish colonial buildings and several historic churches, including an early 18th-century cathedral.

Comayagua had the first university founded by the Spanish in Central America (1632). This university was closed in 1842. Until 1880 the town was the capital of Honduras; it was then superseded by Tegucigalpa, 84 km/52 mi to the southeast. A few kilometres from the town is the Honduras military base of Sotocano. During the 1980s, at the height of the civil war in Nicaragua, up to 10,000 US soldiers were stationed here.