Quito

Quito is the capital city of Ecuador. It is in the Andes, a long line of tall mountains.

Quito is very high up. It is also very close to the equator.

Quito is the capital of Ecuador, a country on the west coast of South America. UNESCO says the city stands at about 2,850 meters above sea level and spreads along the slopes of the Pichincha volcano, in the Andes mountains.

Quito is only about 24 kilometers south of the equator, the imaginary line around the middle of the Earth. Ecuador's 2022 census counted 1,763,275 people in the city, the second most in the country after Guayaquil.

Ecuador's statistics institute (INEC) counted 1,763,275 people in Quito in the census of 30 November 2022, behind Guayaquil (2,650,288); Pichincha province, which contains Quito, had 3,089,473. UNESCO gives the city's altitude as 2,850 m in one text and 2,818 m in another, and describes it spread along the slopes of the Pichincha volcano, bordered by the hills of Panecillo and Ichimbia.

Universalis describes Quito on a ledge of the volcano's slopes, above a wide basin cut by deep valleys, with a fairly temperate climate.

Quito has a very old center with big stone churches and squares.

The streets cross each other like the lines on a checkerboard.

In 1978 UNESCO put the City of Quito on its World Heritage List. UNESCO calls its historic center the best-preserved and least altered in Latin America, even after an earthquake in 1917.

The old center has central squares, streets laid out like a checkerboard, and houses of one or two floors built around patios. Its monasteries of San Francisco and Santo Domingo and the Church and Jesuit College of La Compañía are richly decorated inside in the 'Baroque school of Quito', which mixes Spanish, Italian, Moorish, Flemish and Indigenous art.

UNESCO's entry (criteria ii and iv) covers 70.43 hectares, with a buffer zone of 375.25 hectares. Its synthesis says the streets follow the original plan, with central and secondary squares and checkerboard-patterned streets aligned on the cardinal points of the compass, and that the houses were usually built of earthen bricks covered with stucco.

UNESCO names San Francisco, Santo Domingo, San Agustín, La Compañía, La Merced and the Recoleta of San Diego among the principal buildings of the Baroque school of Quito (Escuela Quiteña), valued both for their architecture and for their decoration: altarpieces, paintings and sculptures.

Farms in the valleys near Quito grow fruit and vegetables for the city.

People also grow flowers, and airplanes carry them to other countries.

Universalis describes goods from the basins and valleys of the Andes arriving in Quito, whose trade reaches the northern coast and the edge of the Amazon. It describes farms on the best land growing vegetables and fruit for the city's markets, and flowers, some grown in greenhouses, flown out from the international airport to buyers abroad.

Making cloth (textiles) was the main kind of work from the late 1600s. Universalis says Quito has become more and more a city of services: the capital, a university city, and a center for tourism and conferences.

Universalis (undated) says the highland zones with the best soils and irrigation specialized in vegetables and fruit for the capital's markets, while flower growing, partly under greenhouses, built an important export trade through the international airport. Textiles dominated jobs from the end of the 17th century.

The same article describes efforts to add pharmaceuticals, food products and car assembly, and notes that the modern center below the old town has bristled with towers since 1970. The Pan-American Highway, crossing Ecuador from north to south, links Quito's trade with Colombia.