Metropolitan Cultural Centre and former Royal Barracks

Look at this stone building on the corner. From outside it looks like an early 20th-century palace, and it is, but inside it holds three centuries of Quito's history, including one of its most tragic episodes.

1A Jesuit university

In 1622 the Jesuits opened the University of San Gregorio Magno here. After their expulsion in 1767 the building remained a university and, according to the city's academic tradition, the Enlightenment ideas of Eugenio Espejo, a mestizo doctor and journalist regarded as a forerunner of independence, circulated in its classrooms and gatherings. The scientists of the 18th-century French Geodesic Mission, which measured the Earth at the equator, worked in these same rooms, and on 13 May 1830 the act separating Quito from Gran Colombia, which gave rise to Ecuador, was signed here.

22 August 1810

Part of the complex was the Royal Barracks of Lima, where the patriots of the 1809 junta were held prisoner. On 2 August 1810 a group of Quiteños stormed the barracks to free them. The soldiers responded by killing the prisoners in their cells, and the fighting spread through the streets: between two and three hundred people died, about one per cent of the city.

Among the victims was Juan de Dios Morales, whose name is today the official name of La Ronda street.

The building now houses the Museo Alberto Mena Caamaño, which recreates the massacre with wax figures.

3What to look for

• The stone façade, designed by Francisco Espinosa Acevedo from 1914 onwards.
• The dome of La Compañía, peeking out right next door: both buildings were once a single Jesuit complex.
• The corner with the Plaza Grande, where the attackers ran in 1810.