Quito: the old town and the Equator

Four centers of power stand around the square. Carondelet Palace, where the president sits, is to the west. The cathedral is to the south, the Archbishop's Palace to the north and the Municipal Palace (city hall) to the east.

The Independence Monument from 1906 shows an Andean condor biting a broken chain. The condor is an Indigenous symbol. Below it, a wounded Spanish lion runs away.

The first religious building in Quito after the Spanish took the city. From the outside it is less impressive than San Francisco and La Compañía. But it came before them, both in time and in importance. Colonial rulers always built a cathedral to show that they were in power.

Marshal Antonio José de Sucre is buried here. He was one of the heroes of South America's fight for independence, and Quito's airport carries his name.

Building the church took 160 years, from 1605 to 1765. The walls and ceilings are covered in very thin sheets of real gold, made with the "pan de oro" method. People estimate that about seven metric tons of gold were used.

The Quito School was a group of Indigenous and mestizo (mixed Indigenous and European) artists. They sent statues and paintings all over the Spanish Empire. Their most famous work is the Virgin of Quito, a winged statue from 1734.

The oldest religious site in Ecuador. The atrium (open area) in front of it is built of volcanic stone. There, Inca sun faces (Inti) are cut into the stone next to Christian symbols. You can see the two religions mixed even before you go in.

The statue "the Winged Virgin of Quito" was first made here in 1734, not on El Panecillo. The giant statue we will see later in the day is a larger copy of it.

The only exception in Quito's plan of straight Spanish streets. This street curves because a stream ran under it. An Indigenous path to the water sources also ran along it.

At the end of the 19th century the rich families moved north, and rents fell sharply. The street became the center of artists and bohemian life in Ecuador. After many years in bad condition, it was restored in 2006 with the original plaster and adobe (mud brick).

Instead of European gargoyles (stone creatures on the walls), the outside walls have giant tortoises, marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies, condors and tapirs. It is French Gothic style, filled with Ecuador's animals.

In 1873 President García Moreno dedicated Ecuador to the Sacred Heart and promised to build a church for it. The first stone was laid in 1892, and the building opened only in 1988. Officially, some parts of it are still unfinished.

The name means "little bread roll" in Spanish, because of the hill's round shape. Before the Spanish colonial period it was called Shungoloma, "hill of the heart" in Kichwa. A temple to the sun god Inti stood on its top.

The winged Virgin from 1976 is a huge, larger copy of a wooden statue from San Francisco church. It is about 41 m tall with its base, and it is made of more than 7,000 numbered aluminum plates. No other statue like it in the world is this big.

The monument stands on the line that the French Geodesic Mission, a group of scientists who measured the Earth, marked in 1736. Modern GPS measurements show that the real line is about 240 m north of it.