Quito

Quito's UNESCO-listed old town concentrates an unusual density of colonial-era religious architecture within a compact, walkable area. La Compañía de Jesús is the centrepiece — its interior is covered almost entirely in gold leaf, applied over more than a century of construction, and ranks among the most ornate Baroque church interiors anywhere in the Americas. A short walk away, the Church and Convent of San Francisco, Quito's oldest religious complex, holds the paintings of the Quito School, a genuinely distinct artistic tradition blending imported Renaissance technique with Andean subject matter and colour sensibility, produced largely by Indigenous and mestizo artists over several generations.

Plaza Grande, Quito's main square, sits at the functional heart of both colonial and modern Ecuador — the Presidential Palace (Palacio de Carondelet) still houses the country's executive government, and the plaza itself remains an active civic space rather than a preserved-in-amber monument. The Metropolitan Cathedral facing the square shows a more restrained architectural style than La Compañía's later exuberance, giving a useful visual sense of how colonial religious architecture evolved across the centuries the old town was built.

El Panecillo, a hill rising directly from the southern edge of the historic centre, gives Quito's classic panoramic view — the old town's red-tiled roofs spread below, with the city's long, narrow Andean valley and surrounding volcanoes visible beyond. The hilltop's aluminium Virgin of Quito statue, assembled from thousands of individual pieces, is itself a landmark visible from much of the old town looking up. The climb or short taxi ride to the summit is a near-essential complement to walking the historic centre's streets, giving the layout a context that's hard to grasp from ground level alone.

North of the old town, the La Mariscal and La Floresta districts show a completely different Quito — restaurants, bars, boutique hotels and a livelier nightlife scene than the historic centre's more subdued evening atmosphere. La Floresta in particular has developed a genuine café and independent-art-gallery culture in recent years, a useful contrast for visitors who've spent a day or two immersed in colonial architecture and want a more contemporary evening register. Quito's restaurants also draw on all three of Ecuador's regional cuisines, which barely overlap despite belonging to the same small country.