a number of years but on 9 May 1530 the two kings of the most important clans returned from the wilds. A day later they were joined by many nobles and their families and many more people came with them to surrender at the new Spanish capital at Ciudad Vieja.
Modern history
The ruins were described by Guatemalan historian Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmánin 1695. Miguel Rivera Maestre published some plans and views of the ruins in 1834 in hisAtlas del Estado de Guatemala ("Atlas of the State of Guatemala"). American diplomat and writer John Lloyd Stephens described the ruins, which he called Patinamit, after he visited Iximche with English artist Frederick Catherwood and in 1840. Catherwood never published any drawings of the site and Stephens reported that the locals had plundered the stone at the site for many years in order to use it for building materials in Tecpán. French architect Cesar Daly mapped Iximche in 1857.
In Spanish Colonial times Iximche was the focus of a syncretic cult worshipping a relic from the ruins that had been translated to the church in Tecpán. As late as the 19th century processions to the ruins from Tecpán took place every Good Friday. This cult had died out by the time of the Guatemalan Civil War in the late 20th century.
Alfred P. Maudslay visited Iximche in 1887 and referred to it both as Patinamit andIximche. He carried out a site survey and published a plan of the ruins. Robert Wauchope carried out a ceramic study of Iximche in the 1940s on behalf of the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University and published his work in 1948–1949. Historian Janos de Szecsy began excavations at the ruins in January 1956. The remains of the city were excavated by Swiss-Guatemalan archaeologist George (Jorge) Guillemín from 1959-1972. Guillemín published his work in 1959, 1967 and 1969. The excavation and restoration of the ruins
