Quito: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Quito has no Inca ruins, and that is the first thing to understand here. When the Spanish came in 1534 the Inca general Ruminahui burned the city to the ground rather than hand it over, so what you are walking through was built entirely on top of ashes. Three hundred and twenty hectares of it survived unaltered, which is why Quito and Krakow were the first two cities ever placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1978. Two and a half hours, all of it inside six streets. Start at eight.
A short history of Quito
Quito lies at an altitude of about 2,850 metres, and before the Spanish it was an important city of the Inca Empire. In 1534, as the conquistadors approached, the general Rumiñahui burnt it, and in the same year Sebastián de Benalcázar founded San Francisco de Quito on its ruins. In the centuries that followed dozens of churches and monasteries were built here, and the "Quito School" of religious art became famous across the continent. On 10 August 1809 local people declared self-rule here, one of the first calls for independence in Latin America. In 1978 Quito, together with Kraków, was the first city to be declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Quito
1Plaza de la IndependenciaThe square the whole old town turns around, with the presidential palace on one side and the cathedral on another. Sit on a bench at eight in the morning; it belongs to the city then, not to visitors.
2Metropolitan CathedralBegun in 1562 and it leans: the ground under the old town is volcanic fill and the building has been repaired after earthquakes for four centuries. Antonio Jose de Sucre is buried inside.
3Palacio de CarondeletThe working seat of the president, and you can go in on a free guided tour — booked in advance with a passport. The changing of the guard is Monday at eleven.
4La Compania de JesusA hundred and sixty years to build, from 1605 to 1765, and the inside is covered in gold leaf from floor to vault. Buy the ticket; photographs are not allowed and that is the reason to stand still in it.
5San Francisco monasteryBegun in 1534, weeks after the Spanish founded the city, and it is the largest colonial complex in the Americas — three hectares of cloisters, church and workshops.
6Plaza de San FranciscoA bare stone square with no trees and no fountain, on purpose: this was the market of the Inca town and later the parade ground. Late afternoon light hits the white facade straight on.
7Capilla de CantunaThe chapel attached to San Francisco that carries the city's best-known story: Cantuna, who could not finish the work in time, is said to have made a pact with the devil and then hidden a single stone so the work was never complete.
8Museo Fray Pedro GocialThe monastery's own museum, and the place to see what the Quito School actually was: Spanish subjects carved and painted by indigenous hands, with faces and plants that are not European.
9Santo DomingoThe square in front is where the old town's evening happens — buskers, fried food, families. The church itself holds a Baroque ceiling painted by Mudejar craftsmen.
10Basilica del Voto NacionalThe gargoyles are Galapagos tortoises, iguanas, armadillos and boobies instead of European monsters. You can climb the towers on open wooden planks, which is not for everyone.
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Quito →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Quito:
Free walking tours in Quito
The City Built on a Burned City
Quito has no Inca ruins, and that is the first thing to understand here. When the Spanish came in 1534 the Inca general Ruminahui burned the city to the ground rather than hand it over, so what you are walking through was built entirely on top of ashes. Three hundred and twenty hectares of it survived unaltered, which is why Quito and Krakow were the first two cities ever placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1978. Two and a half hours, all of it inside six streets. Start at eight.
- Plaza de la Independencia · Four sides, four powers: the presidential palace, the cathedral, the archbishop's palace and the city hall, which is exactly how a Spanish colonial capital was laid out. The monument in the middle marks the tenth of August 1809, when Quito declared a governing junta — the first in Spanish America, two years before anyone else.
- The cathedral and El Sagrario · Look at the floor inside: it slopes. The cathedral was begun in 1562 on volcanic fill and has been patched after every large earthquake since. Antonio Jose de Sucre, who won the country its independence, is buried in a side chapel here, and so is the president who was assassinated on the steps outside in 1877.
- La Compania de Jesus · A hundred and sixty years of building, 1605 to 1765, and every surface inside is gold leaf over carved wood. The Jesuits were expelled from the Spanish empire two years after it was finished and never used it. Photography is forbidden inside, which is the only reason anyone actually looks up.
- San Francisco · Three hectares, begun weeks after the city was founded in 1534 and built by indigenous labour under one Flemish friar, Jodoco Ricke, who also planted the first wheat in Ecuador in its courtyard. It is the largest colonial building in the Americas and the church is only a tenth of it.
- Museo de la Ciudad · This was the San Juan de Dios hospital, open from 1565 to 1974 — four hundred and nine years in the same building, which makes it the longest-serving hospital in the Americas. The wards are now the galleries and the old operating room is still recognisable.
- La Ronda · The oldest street in the city and once its bohemian quarter — poets, guitar makers, printers. It emptied and became dangerous, and the city restored it house by house from 2006 on condition that the old trades came back. Finish with a canelazo, standing.
The Rim: Hills, Towers and the Volcano
The old town sits in a bowl, and this route goes round its edge rather than through it. It is the route that explains the shape of the city: a strip forty kilometres long and five wide, pinned between a live volcano and a valley, which is why Quito grew north and south and never outwards. Three hours with two steep climbs, and the air here holds roughly a quarter less oxygen than at sea level, so count on it taking longer than it looks.
- El Panecillo · The name means little bread roll. The Inca had a sun temple here called Yavirac, and the Spanish pulled it down and used the stone; nothing of it remains above ground. The hill is the one place from which the whole forty-kilometre city is visible at once.
- The winged Virgin · Forty-one metres of aluminium in seven thousand four hundred pieces, raised in 1975, and a copy of a wooden carving Bernardo de Legarda made in 1734. She has wings and she is standing on a chained serpent — an image from the Book of Revelation, and almost the only winged Madonna anywhere.
- Yaku and the water · The museum sits on the city's first reservoir. Quito is at two thousand eight hundred and fifty metres, where water boils at about ninety degrees — which is why nothing here is cooked the way a recipe says and why beans take all afternoon.
- La Merced · Built as a thank-you after Pichincha erupted in 1660 and covered the city. Its tower carries the oldest clock in Quito, made in London in 1817, and the paintings inside show the eruption itself with the city under ash.
- Basilica del Voto Nacional · Begun in 1892 and still unfinished, and the gargoyles are not monsters but Galapagos tortoises, iguanas, armadillos, condors and boobies — the country's own animals carved where Europe would have put demons. The local saying is that the world ends when the church is completed.
- Parque Itchimbia · The glass hall on this hill is Quito's old market building, cast in Hamburg, shipped across the Atlantic and put up in the centre in 1889; it was dismantled and re-erected here in 2004. The view from the grass is the one straight-on view of the old town.
The Other Quito
Everything above is the city Spain built. This route is the city Ecuador built after it, and it runs north through the parks and the quarters where people actually live — the art of a painter who spent his life on what was done to this continent, the bar square, the coffee streets, and a village the city swallowed. Two and a half hours on the flat, and this half of town is where you will eat well.
- Parque El Ejido · The common grazing land of colonial Quito — ejido means exactly that — and the boundary between the old town and the new. On Saturday and Sunday its north edge becomes an open-air art market that has run for decades.
- Casa de la Cultura · Founded in 1944, in the year after a disastrous war with Peru, on the argument that a country which had just lost half its territory had to hold on to something else. The pre-Columbian gold rooms are the reason to go in.
- Plaza Foch · The centre of La Mariscal, which was built in the 1920s as the garden suburb for families leaving the old town. It is now bars and hostels, it is lively, and it is also the one part of Quito where visitors are regularly robbed after dark.
- La Floresta · The quarter the city's own thirty-year-olds moved to: coffee roasters, small kitchens and the Ocho y Medio cinema, which has shown art films since 2001 in a neighbourhood that had none.
- Capilla del Hombre · Oswaldo Guayasamin built this as a single argument about what was done to the people of this continent, from the mines to the dictatorships. He died in 1999 with it unfinished and it opened in 2002; the eternal flame in the floor is lit for the dead of Latin America.
- Guapulo · A village on the slope below the ridge, swallowed by the city but still reached by one steep road. The sanctuary at the bottom holds a pulpit that Juan Bautista Menacho carved over seven years in the seventeenth century, and from the terrace above it the valley drops away towards the Amazon.
Getting to Quito and getting around
- Mariscal Sucre Airport · Twenty-four kilometres east of the city and five hundred metres lower, which is the point: the old airport was inside town and planes came in between the buildings. Allow an hour each way.
- Quitumbe Bus Terminal · The southern terminal, and the one for anything heading south — Baños, Cuenca, Guayaquil, Latacunga for Quilotoa. The metro reaches it.
- Carcelen Bus Terminal · The northern terminal, for Otavalo, Ibarra and the Colombian border. Buses to Otavalo leave every fifteen minutes and take about two hours.
- Metro Line 1 · Opened to the public in 2023 and it changed the city: twenty-two kilometres under a town that is forty kilometres long and five wide. One flat fare.
- El Recreo interchange · Where the metro, the trolleybus and the southern buses meet. The trolleybus system opened in 1995 and was the first electric BRT line in Latin America.
Cheap eats in Quito
Eight counters where Quito eats standing, and one thing to know first: Ecuador uses the US dollar, so every price here is in dollars and the coins in your change may be Ecuadorian sucres minted for the purpose. The set lunch — almuerzo — is soup, a plate and a juice, and in a market it runs about three dollars. It is served from noon to two and when it is gone it is gone.
- Mercado Central · Open 7 to 4 · a plate about three dollars
- Mercado San Roque · Open 6 to 3 · hornado plate three to four dollars
- Mercado de Santa Clara · Open 7 to 5 · a large juice about a dollar fifty
- Mercado Inaquito · Open 7 to 4 · ceviche four to six dollars
- Mercado La Floresta · Open 7 to 3 · a bowl about three dollars
- Heladeria San Agustin · Open 9 to 6 · two scoops about two dollars
- La Ronda at dusk · From 6pm · a glass one to two dollars
- Mercado de La Magdalena · Open 7 to 4 · a plate two to three dollars
Museums in Quito
- Casa del Alabado · Open 9 to 5:30
- Museo de la Ciudad · Open 9:30 to 5:30, closed Monday
- Museo Nacional · Free · closed Monday
- Capilla del Hombre · One ticket covers the museum next door
- Museo Guayasamin · Open 9:30 to 5, closed Sunday
- Museo Mindalae · Open 9 to 5:30
- Museo Numismatico · Free · closed Sunday
Holy places in Quito
- La Compania de Jesus · Ticket required · no photographs
- San Francisco · Church free, museum ticketed
- Basilica del Voto Nacional · Towers cost extra and are not for vertigo
- La Merced · Open mornings and late afternoon
- Santo Domingo · The square outside is the evening
- Santuario de Guapulo · Quiet on a weekday morning
- El Sagrario · Two minutes from the main square
Parks and gardens in Quito
- Parque La Carolina · Free · busiest Sunday morning
- Parque Metropolitano · Free · trails, not lawns
- Parque Itchimbia · Free · best an hour before sunset
- Parque La Alameda · Free · the observatory charges a small fee
- Parque El Ejido · Free · the market is Saturday and Sunday
- Botanical garden · Small ticket · open daily
- Parque Bicentenario · Free · open all day
Things to do in Quito with kids
- Yaku water museum · Open 9 to 5:30, closed Monday
- Vivarium · Closed Monday
- Quito Zoo, Guayllabamba · Open 9 to 5 every day
- Parque Cumanda · Free · closed Monday
- TelefériQo · Go before eleven, before the cloud
- Mitad del Mundo · Open 9 to 6 · busiest at weekends
- Jardin de Orquideas · Book ahead · small groups
Nature and day trips near Quito
- Cotopaxi · Two hours south · go with a driver
- Mindo · Two hours west · stay the night
- Quilotoa · Three hours south · a long day
- Laguna Cuicocha · Combine with Otavalo on a Saturday
- Papallacta · Ninety minutes east · take a towel
- Pululahua · Twenty minutes past Mitad del Mundo
- Antisana · Two hours east · a guide is required
Frequently asked questions about Quito
What is there to see in Quito?
The top sights in Quito are Plaza de la Independencia, Metropolitan Cathedral and Palacio de Carondelet. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Quito?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Quito without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Quito?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Quito, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The City Built on a Burned City.
How do you get to Quito and get around?
The main ways are Mariscal Sucre Airport, Quitumbe Bus Terminal and Carcelen Bus Terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Quito, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Quito that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Quito for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.