San Francisco and the Quito School

In front of you is the San Francisco complex, the largest religious ensemble in any historic centre in the Americas: three churches and thirteen cloisters spread over about three and a half hectares. From here you can see why Quiteños call their city an open-air museum.

1A school for artists

The Franciscans didn't just build churches. Next to the monastery they founded a school, the College of San Andrés, where the sons of the Indigenous nobility and mestizos learned to read, to sing and trades such as painting, sculpture and woodcarving. Out of that teaching grew the Quito School, the style that between the 16th and 18th centuries made Quito one of the great workshops of religious art in the Americas. Its works were exported to Lima, Bogotá, Popayán and even Spain.

2The masters

Among its leading names are the painter Miguel de Santiago and two sculptors: Bernardo de Legarda and the Indigenous artist Manuel Chili, known as Caspicara. In 1734 Legarda carved a small winged Virgin that is kept on the high altar of this church; it is the model for the great Virgin of El Panecillo.

King Charles III is credited with an often-quoted line: that he didn't mind Italy having Michelangelo, because in his American colonies he had Caspicara. There's no proof he ever said it.

The monastery museum, named after Friar Pedro Gocial, one of its founders, lets you see many of these works up close.

3What to look for

• The white towers, rebuilt after several earthquakes.
• The Mannerist doorway, sober outside compared with the gold within.
• The atrium, where ordinary people were buried in the 16th and 17th centuries.