🇪🇨 Ecuador · Sierra (Andean Highlands)
Few capitals in the world unfold on a stage as theatrical as Quito's. The city settles into a long, narrow Andean valley, at around 2,850 meters, hemmed in by green slopes and watched over by the Pichincha volcano, with snowcapped peaks on the horizon. Its great treasure is the Centro Histórico: the best-preserved and one of the largest colonial quarters in all of the Americas, a maze of cobbled streets, squares, convents and churches that in 1978 made Quito —along with Kraków— one of the first two places on the planet inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Walking Quito is a journey into the heart of American baroque. The Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús dazzles with interiors covered in gold leaf; San Francisco holds one of the oldest religious complexes on the continent; the Basílica del Voto Nacional can be climbed all the way up its neo-Gothic towers; and from El Panecillo, the winged Virgen de Quito blesses the city. But Quito is not only colonial stone and gold: it is the TelefériQo that climbs to more than 4,000 meters up the flanks of Pichincha, it is the Mitad del Mundo monument where you stand on the equatorial line, it is the bohemian air of La Ronda and the nightlife of La Mariscal.
This guide covers the essentials of Quito with a practical, warm eye: which churches and squares not to miss, how to get up Pichincha and El Panecillo, how to organize the trip to the Mitad del Mundo, where to sleep and eat, how to get around and how to look after yourself in a big, high-altitude city. Quito is intense, ancient and full of surprises, and with a bit of planning —and respect for the pace the altitude sets— it hands you some of the most memorable days of any trip through Ecuador.
Long before the Spanish arrived, the Quito region was inhabited by peoples of the northern highlands —the Quitus and, later, the Caras or Caranquis— whose name stayed bound to the city forever. Tradition even speaks of a 'Kingdom of Quito' predating the Incas, though its extent is disputed by historians. In the late 15th century the Inca Empire, expanding northward, absorbed the area: the great Inca Huayna Cápac made Quito a fundamental center of power, and his son Atahualpa governed here, the central figure in the civil war with his brother Huáscar that coincided with the arrival of the conquistadors. Tradition tells that, before the Spanish troops could take it, the Inca general Rumiñahui set the city on fire so it would not fall intact into foreign hands. On those ashes, on 6 December 1534, Sebastián de Benalcázar founded the Spanish town of San Francisco de Quito. The city soon became the seat of the Real Audiencia de Quito (1563), within the Viceroyalty of Peru and later of New Granada, and it flourished as a great religious and artistic center: out of its workshops came the celebrated Escuela Quiteña, which fused European technique with Indigenous sensibility in the images, carvings and paintings that fill its churches. Quito also holds a place of honor in American independence: on 10 August 1809 it staged the so-called Primer Grito de Independencia, the first cry of independence, one of the earliest autonomy movements on the continent. Definitive freedom came on 24 May 1822, when Marshal Antonio José de Sucre won the Battle of Pichincha, on the volcano's own slopes, sealing the independence of the Real Audiencia. Since 1830, with the birth of the Republic of Ecuador, Quito has been its capital. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of the capital: land of the Quitus and Caras, cradle of Quito —the first Unesco World Heritage Site alongside Kraków—, stage of the First Cry of 1809 and of the battle of Pichincha that sealed independence, crossed by the equator at the Mitad del Mundo.
Read the history of Pichincha →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before any Spanish city existed, the high land of the valley where Quito stands today was inhabited by Andean peoples. The oldest and most emblematic were the Quitus, whose name stayed bound to the place forever. They lived in this knot of temperate mountains, almost on the equator, making use of the fertility of the valleys, the meltwater and a strategic position at the crossroads between the coast, the highlands and the jungle. Because of that crossroads role in trade, Quito was a meeting point of peoples from very early on.
Over time, around the first millennium AD, the Caras or Caranquis arrived in the region, a people who, by tradition, are said to have merged with the Quitus to form a confederation known in some chronicles as the 'Kingdom of Quito' or kingdom of the Shyris. This idea of a powerful, organized pre-Inca kingdom was widely spread by chroniclers and historians of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially by Father Juan de Velasco, and became part of the founding story of Ecuadorian identity.
Modern historiography, however, treats that 'Kingdom of Quito' as Velasco described it with caution: clear archaeological evidence of such a structured state is missing, and many details look more like legend than proven history. What is beyond doubt is that complex Andean societies existed here, with chiefdoms, trade and settlements, and that they gave Quito its first human face and its name.
Toward the end of the 15th century, the Inca Empire or Tahuantinsuyo, expanding north from Cusco, reached the lands of Quito. Its incorporation was not peaceful: the northern peoples —the Caranquis above all— resisted the conquest fiercely, and it dragged on through the reigns of the Incas Túpac Yupanqui and, most of all, Huayna Cápac. The chronicles recall bloody battles, such as the one at Lake Yahuarcocha ('lake of blood'), before the region came firmly under Inca rule.
Once integrated, Quito took on enormous importance within the empire. The great Inca Huayna Cápac made the region a second center of power, almost a northern capital, and spent much of his final years there. There, according to many versions, his son Atahualpa lived and grew up. On Huayna Cápac's death —probably from an epidemic brought by the Europeans, which arrived ahead of them physically— the empire was split between two of his sons: Huáscar, based in Cusco, and Atahualpa, tied to Quito and the northern army.
A civil war then broke out that bled the Tahuantinsuyo dry just as the Spanish were arriving. Atahualpa ended up prevailing over Huáscar, but the empire was left weakened and divided, a circumstance the conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro knew how to exploit. The capture and execution of Atahualpa at Cajamarca, in 1533, marked the beginning of the end of Inca power, while the Spanish set their sights on Quito, the rich northern stronghold.
After Atahualpa's fall, the Spanish pushed north to take Quito, the heart of Inca power in these lands. But the resistance was not over. The Inca general Rumiñahui, one of Atahualpa's great captains, organized the defense of the north and faced the conquistadors. According to the most widespread tradition, seeing that he could not prevent the city from falling, Rumiñahui chose to burn and raze Quito rather than hand it over intact to the invaders, hiding its treasures as well. For that heroic resistance he is remembered today as a symbol of Indigenous dignity in the face of the conquest.
The Spanish therefore arrived at a Quito in ruins. On 6 December 1534, Captain Sebastián de Benalcázar (Sebastián de Belalcázar), Pizarro's lieutenant, founded on those ashes the town of San Francisco de Quito, in the name of the Spanish Crown. Shortly before, another earlier founding had been carried out by Diego de Almagro to secure the territory against rival conquistadors. The new city was laid out in the Spanish manner, with its central square, its town council and the distribution of plots among the first residents.
The Spanish founding marked the start of a completely new stage. On the Indigenous substrate rose a colonial city that, within a few decades, would fill with churches, convents and grand houses. 6 December remained the founding date, still celebrated today with the huge Fiestas de Quito. And although the city was born of the conquest, its soul stayed deeply mestizo, the fruit of an encounter —often violent, sometimes creative— between the Andean and European worlds.
A few decades after its founding, Quito gained an institutional role of the first order. In 1563, King Philip II created the Real Audiencia de Quito, a high court with broad powers of government and justice covering a vast territory. The Audiencia answered first to the Viceroyalty of Peru and later to the Viceroyalty of New Granada, but it gave Quito an identity and a jurisdiction of its own which, in time, would become the territorial basis of the future Ecuador. Quito thus established itself as one of the great cities of Spanish America.
Through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the city flourished above all as a religious and artistic center. The religious orders —Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, Mercedarians— raised ever more sumptuous churches, convents and monasteries, in a genuine competition of beauty and devotion. Out of that fervor came one of the most remarkable cultural phenomena of the colonial period: the Escuela Quiteña, a current of religious art (painting, sculpture, carving and gilding) that developed between the 17th and 18th centuries and became famous across Spanish America.
What was extraordinary about the Escuela Quiteña was its mestizo character. Indigenous and mestizo masters learned the European techniques but fused them with their own sensibility, their colors, their naturalism and details of the Andean world, creating a unique style. Artists such as Bernardo de Legarda (author of the celebrated 'winged Virgin' of Quito) or Manuel Chili 'Caspicara' produced masterpieces that still fill the churches of the Centro Histórico. That artistic and architectural heritage, preserved almost intact, is the underlying reason Quito was one of the first two sites in the world declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.
Quito holds a place of honor in the history of American emancipation. On 10 August 1809, a group of criollos and notables of the city led a movement considered one of the first calls for autonomy in all of Spanish America. Taking advantage of the crisis opened in Spain by Napoleon's invasion and the captivity of King Ferdinand VII, the conspirators deposed the colonial authorities and formed a Sovereign Governing Junta which, in the name of the captive king, took power in the Audiencia de Quito. That is why Quito is known as the 'Luz de América', the light of America.
The movement, however, was short-lived. The Junta could not sustain itself or extend its authority, the neighboring colonial powers reacted, and within a few months royalist order was restored. The most tragic part came afterward: on 2 August 1810, many of the movement's leaders, who were being held prisoner, were killed in a massacre in the jails of Quito during a popular rescue attempt. The repression was brutal and left a deep wound.
Despite its immediate failure, 10 August 1809 was engraved as the 'First Cry of Independence' and as a founding date of Ecuadorian patriotic feeling; today it is Ecuador's national holiday. Those first martyrs —remembered as the próceres— lit a spark that, a decade later, would turn into the decisive fight for freedom. The Plaza Grande in Quito still holds at its center the monument honoring the heroes of that August.
Definitive independence for Quito and the Audiencia came more than a decade after that first cry, in the context of the great campaigns by Simón Bolívar and his generals to liberate northern South America. After years of fighting, liberation was decided in a battle fought on the very flanks of the Pichincha volcano, which watches over the city from the west. The lead figure was the young and brilliant Marshal Antonio José de Sucre, Bolívar's trusted lieutenant.
On 24 May 1822, the patriot troops commanded by Sucre —a multinational army with soldiers from several parts of the Americas and foreign volunteers— faced and defeated the royalist forces on the slopes of Pichincha, at high altitude, close to Quito. The victory at Pichincha sealed the independence of the Audiencia de Quito from Spanish rule and opened the city's gates to the liberating armies. The date is today one of Ecuador's most important anniversaries.
After the battle, the territory of the old Audiencia was incorporated into Gran Colombia, Bolívar's ambitious state project uniting present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador. But that great country did not last long: internal tensions gradually dissolved it, and in 1830 the territories of the old Audiencia broke away to form an independent nation, the Republic of Ecuador, which took its name from the equatorial line that crosses it. Quito, the old city of the Quitus, of the Incas and of the colonial convents, was proclaimed its capital, a role it holds to this day.
Since the birth of the Republic of Ecuador in 1830, Quito has been its political and administrative capital, the seat of the powers of state. Through the 19th and 20th centuries the city grew slowly at first and then rapidly, spilling out of the old colonial quarter to the north and south of the valley and climbing the slopes. That produced contemporary Quito: a long, narrow metropolis, with its colonial Centro Histórico in the middle, the modern northern districts (business, finance, La Mariscal, La Carolina) and working-class expansion toward the south and the neighboring valleys of Cumbayá, Tumbaco and Los Chillos.
International recognition came in 1978. That year, at one of the first meetings of the newly created World Heritage program, UNESCO inscribed the city of Quito on its list, along with the historic center of Kraków (Poland): they became two of the first cultural sites on the planet declared World Heritage. The reason was clear: Quito has the best-preserved and one of the largest historic centers in all of Latin America, an almost intact colonial ensemble that is an exceptional testimony to the baroque art and architecture of the New World.
That title brought prestige, but also the responsibility of protecting a fragile heritage against urban growth, decay and the challenges of a living city. In recent decades Quito has invested heavily in restoring churches, recovering emblematic streets such as La Ronda, putting order into the old quarter and combining conservation with tourism. Today the Ecuadorian capital offers travelers a fascinating synthesis of all its eras: the Andean substrate of the Quitus, Inca power, the colonial sumptuousness of the Escuela Quiteña, the liberating spark of 10 August and the energy of a modern Andean capital, all at 2,850 meters and almost exactly on the middle of the world.