Ecuador contains Quito, the country’s capital and a historic city founded by the Spanish in 1534. Spanish conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar established the colonial city on the ruins of an earlier Indigenous settlement.
Quito lies in a narrow Andean valley near the Equator, at an elevation of roughly 2,850 metres. Its high-altitude location gives it a mild climate despite its position close to the Equator. The city’s historic center contains churches, monasteries, plazas, and colonial buildings influenced by Spanish and Indigenous artistic traditions.
UNESCO designated Quito’s historic center a World Heritage Site in 1978, in the first group of sites inscribed under the new World Heritage program. Quito is often paired with Ecuador’s nearby Mitad del Mundo monument, although the monument is not exactly on the modern measured Equator. The capital’s name is associated with the Quitu people who lived in the region before Spanish rule.