Quito: beauty and history.

• Author: Kiernan, James Patrick
• Position: Inter-American System

One of this hemisphere's lofties capitals, Quito, Ecuador, is almost two miles above sea level and only fifteen miles south of the equator. Occupying a high fertile hoya or basin, between the towering mountains of the Andean cordilleras, the city's setting is one of unsurpassed natural beauty. With a population of a million and a half, Quito is a city of contrasts, a place where native Indian and imported Spanish traditions intermingle, and where the pre-colonial past exists side by side with the post-modern world.

In Ecuador, climate is measured by the kilometer, and extremes of temperature and vegetation are determined principally by altitude, Set in a verdant sun-drenched valley, the climate of Quito is forever springtime, in a single day the weather may vary from clear, bright skies, with the heat of the sun barely filtered in the thin air, to a precipitous drop in temperature as shivery cold rain sweeps down from the cratered heights.

The Spaniards founded modern Quito in 1534, on the same site where the Incas had established the capital of their northern kingdom just decades before, and where centuries earlier the Indian confederation of the Quitu and Caras, whom the Incas vanquished, had located their capital. Quite, along with Mexico City and Cuzco, is one of the oldest pre-Columbian capitals in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1563, the Spanish crown created the audiencia, or high court, of Quito, which made the city the local center of the imperial bureaucracy. It grew rapidly as an administrative and commercial center, but was increasingly known, as is evident today, as a religious center with many ecclesiastical establishments. The early architecture of the Ecuadoran capital is so grandiose in large part because of the power and wealth or the church in colonial times and the influence of the religious orders. There are more than two dozen churches and convents in the historic center of the city. The finest examples of Spanish Baroque architecture and the plastic arts can be found there. In Quito, Spain created one of the most beautiful cities of the New World, and the fame of its magnificent churches spread abroad the renown of its artists and craftsmen.

The largest church and monastery is that of San Francisco, which occupies the full length of the block on the plaza of the same name. Founded in the same year as the city itself, it is a massive edifice of stone. The church and adjoining convent was the first to be erected by the...