Plaza and Church of San Francisco

In front of you opens the Plaza de San Francisco and, at the top of its steps, the church Quiteños proudly call “the Escorial of the Americas”. A tip before you start: you're about 2,850 metres above sea level, so take the slopes slowly and drink water. This route begins exactly where the Spanish city began.

1A city in flames

Before 1534 there was an Inca city here, one of the great centres of the northern Tahuantinsuyo. According to the chronicles, as Sebastián de Benalcázar's troops advanced from the south, the general Rumiñahui ordered Quito emptied and set on fire so the conquerors would find nothing to plunder. He was captured and executed by the Spanish in 1535. Today he is Ecuador's great symbol of Indigenous resistance.

2The town of San Francisco

On the ruins, on 6 December 1534, the town council of San Francisco de Quito was set up. Very soon afterwards, the Flemish Franciscans Jodoco Ricke and Pedro Gosseal were granted this enormous plot. Excavations in the 1980s found pre-Hispanic pottery under the nave, the cloisters, the atrium and the square itself: the place mattered long before the friars arrived.

The work took more than a century. The present church was begun around 1550 and was largely finished by the late 17th century, with thirteen cloisters and three churches.

In the school the Franciscans opened next to the monastery, the first Indigenous and mestizo painters and sculptors learned their trade. That is where the Quito School was born.

3What to look for

• The staircase, half concave and half convex, inspired by a design by Bramante.
• The stone façade between two white towers, one of the first Mannerist façades in South America.
• The sloping square, for centuries an Indigenous market and the city's water source.