Quito

Quito is the capital of Ecuador, in a high Andean valley on the slopes of the Pichincha volcano. The equator passes just north of the city, where the Mitad del Mundo monument marks the line between the hemispheres.

Quito was a northern center of the Inca Empire before the Spanish came. Sebastián de Benalcázar founded the Spanish city in 1534 on the site of an older town. Churches, convents and painting workshops grew around its squares, and the Quito School of art became known across South America for its carved and painted religious images. The city raised one of the first cries for independence from Spain in the early 19th century. Its historic center was among the first sites placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1978.

Pronaca raises chicken and pork and makes processed foods from its base in the city, and Pacari makes organic chocolate from Ecuadorian cacao, including bars flavored with Andean fruits and flowers. Roses from the farms of the highlands near Quito are flown from its airport to buyers in the United States, Europe and Russia.

The Church of La Compañía, built by the Jesuits in the 17th and 18th centuries, has a Baroque interior covered in gold leaf. The Basílica del Voto Nacional is a neo-Gothic church whose stone gargoyles show tortoises, iguanas and other animals of Ecuador. The TelefériQo cable car climbs the slopes of Pichincha to a lookout high above the city. The Mitad del Mundo complex, north of the city, has a monument and museum on the line once measured by a French scientific expedition of the 18th century.