High in the Ecuadorian Andes is the ancient, but thriving, city of Quito.

A walk through the old center, filled with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century mansions and churches, makes the city’s historical roots quickly apparent. Those roots go back even further than the beautiful colonial buildings suggest. For hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived, Quitu people occupied the land on which Quito now sits. In the fifteenth century, the Incas arrived, and the city was subsumed into one of the largest empires the world has ever seen. In 1526, as the conquistadors approached, the Incas set the city ablaze rather than let it fall into Spanish hands
Today Quito stands as one of the most diverse and beautiful cities in the Americas. It is a place where indigenous women in traditional clothing share the sidewalk with dark-suited businesspeople, bohemian students, and tourists. The old colonial heart is still intact, its narrow streets abuzz with activity as vendors from the highlands ply their goods in traditional markets. Visitors can admire the opulent gilded interior of the La Compañía church, climb high atop the steeple of the Basilica del Voto Nacional, see re-creations of the city’s major events at the Museo de la Ciudad, and admire scores of other well-preserved colonial buildings. Downtown, La Mariscal is Ecuador’s cultural capital. Here, you’ll find the Museo del Banco Central, containing the nation’s most treasured possessions: priceless ceramics and metalwork from all of Ecuador’s pre-Colombian peoples, masterpieces of colonial art, especially from the famed Quito School, and works from Ecuador’s justifiably-lauded modern artists. North of La Mariscal lies the gigantic, leafy Parque La Carolina and several American-style shopping malls. Framing all of this are the hills that surround Quito, the most prominent of which is Rucu Pichincha, an emerald-green, extinct volcano that looms over La Mariscal at a height of nearly five thousand meters (sixteen-thousand feet).