The city is unique by its topography, culture and urbanism. Located to the south of the equinoccial line in the skirts of the Atacazo hill, volcano Guagua Pichincha and the bulk of the Rucu Pichincha, Quito despeña from the 2,850 m.s of height to sheltered valleys more of the Chillos and Tumbaco after climbing smooth parallel Eastern hills to those mounts partially fitted by the Machángara river, these accidents lodge to two opposed Exempt: the one that wind throughout 35 km single interrupted by Panecillo or Yavirac, old peak of one reventazón of the volcano and the one of Eastern valleys. Bathed by an annual rainfall of 500 to 2000mm, the semihumid city times shivers and others enjoy with an average temperature of 16 degrees. When the winds blow and warms up an insensitive sun, clarísima light of its atmosphere allows to contemplate a centellante landscape by|the perpetual snows of its six magical mountains. In the days of winter, the city invaded by the fog of the desert becomes fantasmal and unimisma in its solitude of cold and mystery.
The mystery extends to the origins of Quito. Between the 1500 a.C. and the 500 a.C. bloomed the well-known Cotocollao culture little. Thousand years later, the discussed Kingdom of Quito formed by a confederation of Indian towns had been against the advance of the Incas. Today it is spoken, rather, of a preincaica zone inhabited by diverse ethnic señoríos and structured in hierarchized nuclei of joint, most important of which it was the present center of Quito. At the beginning of century XVI, the Incas of Cuzco occupied that native location. There an administrative center was probablem established being to control the built-in equinoccial territories to their empire and would have constructed religious and military constructions.
When the Quito Atahualpa faced Huascar by the control of the Tahuantinsuyo, they appeared the Spaniards commanded by Francisco Pizarro. Overcome Atahualpa in Cajamarca, Sebastián de Benalcázar advanced until Quito. It found it setting afire by hand of Rumiñahui, ringleader of the resistance. With this heróico gesture a stage of the history of the region was closed. Benalcázar established the new city of San Francisco of Quito the 6 of December of 1534. Two months before, the city had been founded by Diego de Almagro to the south of the present location.
Seven years later Francisco de Orellana, starting off of Quito in search of the country of the cinnamon, discovered the Amazon. Veintiún years later, Felipe II created the Real Hearing of Quito. Its jurisdiction included a surface five times greater than the one of the present Republic of Ecuador, by all this last it is considered to Quito as "the Nucleus of the Ecuadorian Nationality" the colonial city covered with glory thanks to the splendor of its art, to the advance of its culture, its eagerness missionary and the love by the freedom.
Enriched by the mining operation and the textile production, it could construct adapted baroque temples and mudéjares with originality to the local atmosphere and ornamented with great profusion of paintings and statures that form a magical world, of undeniable religious didactic value. It was the time of the famous Quito School, builds of the Indian and Spanish mestization. By this unfolding of genius it is called to Quito "Relicario of the Art in America". The geodesic French of the decimal system introduced in Quito the modern rationalist spirit and used the magnificent library of the Jesuita University of San Gregorio. Quito fed the extraordinary company on the missions of Jaén and Mainas.
In Quito Mariana was born and lived de Jesus, patriotic santa and. Quito it left most illustrious and informed the precourses of American independence, the mestizo Francisco Javier of Santa Cruz and Espejo. Quito returned to shine in the heróica decade that begins in 1809. Advanced to the rest of Spanish America, it proclaimed his independence, it fertilized with the blood of his martyred children the 2 of August of 1810, it defended it in the 1812 campaigns and offered the bastion of his sagrada mountain to seal the independence of the present Republic. By these primicias of Exempt freedom "Light of America" is called. Quito, capital of the new Republic, has maintained its spirit rebellious to the present time.
They prove the murder of Gabriel Brown Garci'a, the tyrant illustrated, first passage towards the Liberal Revolution; the Julian Revolution of 1925 to rescue the state of hands of plutocracia banking; the figure of Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, champion of the freedom of suffrage; the understanding whereupon most of the Quito town has welcomed the vindications of the Indian towns and the self-assurance of its acute grafiteros.
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