Arco de la Reina and El Carmen Alto

You're standing beneath the Arco de la Reina, the Queen's Arch, on García Moreno street, which in colonial times was called the street of the Seven Crosses, after the stone crosses that marked its churches. This arch, built in 1726, gave churchgoers shelter from the rain on their way to mass. Look down the street: El Panecillo and its Virgin close the view, one of the most photographed in Quito.

1A saint's house

On one side is El Carmen Alto, a convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns. It occupies the house where Mariana de Jesús, Ecuador's first saint, was born in 1618 and lived. After her death in 1645 the family gave it to the Carmelites, who turned it into an enclosed convent in 1653. Cloistered nuns still live there, and since 2013 part of the convent has been a museum.

According to tradition, Mariana herself predicted that her house would one day become a Carmelite convent.

The nuns usually sell sweets and convent-made products through a torno, the revolving window that lets them serve customers without being seen.

2A four-century hospital

On the other side of the arch is the City Museum, in the former Hospital of San Juan de Dios. Founded in the 16th century, it cared for the sick for some four hundred years, until the 1970s. Today it tells the story of everyday life in Quito since pre-Hispanic times.

3What to look for

• The arch, with its whitewashed vault.
• The view of El Panecillo at the end of the street.
• The stone doorway of El Carmen Alto, on the corner with Rocafuerte.