![]() Museums abound in Quito there are more than 40 of them sprinkled across the city, from its modern northern neighborhoods to the historic center. Below her outstretched wings the 16th-century San Diego Convent protects some of the city’s most unique art, including a painting of the Last Supper with a roasted guinea pig, a traditional Andean delicacy, on its table. It costs just three dollars to climb to its tiled roof and watch 500 years of history unfold all the way to El Panecillo, the prominent southern hill crowned by a 150-foot winged Virgin Mary. Somehow even more lavish is the nearby La Compañia, the Church of the Society of Jesus, where every inch of its altar, walls, and cupolas radiates with precious metals, carvings, and murals. The adjacent convent, now a museum of religious ecstasy, still serves beer in the brewery once run by its monks. The oldest is Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco, a cathedral drenched in gold and relics and sacred artwork. Quito was conquered twice, first by the ancient Inca who turned the city into the northernmost capital of its colossal empire, then by Spanish conquistadors who transformed its sacred pathways in the name of Catholicism and lined them with soaring baroque churches. ![]() While it’s grown exponentially in the years since, filling the steep valley with a sprawling metropolis of close to three million people, the oldest capital in South America remains an alluring 16th century masterpiece. Quito drapes like velvet across the volcanic slopes of Ecuador’s Inter-Andean Valley, cinched tight by the equator’s razor edge.Ī collage of pastel architecture and grand cathedrals, the city’s center is so striking that UNESCO honored Quito as its first World Heritage site (along with Krakow, Poland) back in 1978.
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