One of the most interesting and imposing monuments in the Historic Center of the City of Guatemala is the building that a few years ago was the state General Postal Directorate.

Today, this complex of two buildings united by a bridge is called Centro Cultural Metropolitano (Metropolitan Cultural Center), with an area that still houses the Canadian Post Office.

In the rest of the building it hosts the headquarters of several cultural entities, like ADESCA, the Folkloric Ballet, the Municipal Painting School, Kadejo, the House of National Culture, the offices of the Historic Center, the theater company Rayuela, the paint shop Torana y Caja Lœdica.

Rafael Pérez de León and Enrique Riera designed this monument, in the late forties of the XX Century. These were the same architects that designed the National Palace of Culture and the building of the National Civil Police, all of them built under the government of President Jorge Ubico.

That is why, according to architect Eduardo Andrade, these buildings have a style that might be called ubiquista, because they mark that chapter in the architectural history of the country.

But in spite of being the inheritance of a dictatorial era, walking around its patios, gardens and corridors is an experience that reminds us of that period of paused rhythm.

Its length invites you to careful observation, with interior splendid decorations, as well as changes of lights and shadows, which emerge thanks to its generous dimensions, things that you are not able to see with only a glance to the building.

Another of its characteristics is that in spite of being in the middle of the Historic Center of the capital city, the environment inside the building is so quite, specially on the third level, where a visitor once said, in an undertone: "this building is almost mystical".