Whitewashed colonial blocks and carved stone churches climb steep streets between Plaza Grande and the Panecillo hill.
What Centro Histórico de Quito looks like
is ringed by the Cathedral, the Presidential Palace, the Archbishop's Palace and the Municipal Palace. Their stone columns and iron balconies face a paved square of palms and benches. The rises directly south of the old town, close enough that its hilltop statue appears above the rooftops from streets several blocks away.
The grid between the plazas is narrow and steep, cobblestone in places and asphalt in others, climbing hard enough in spots to end in a staircase. Balconied two and three storey houses in pink, ochre and white plaster crowd the sidewalk directly. Wrought iron rails, hanging flags and small shopfronts line the street at ground level.
The stands at García Moreno and Sucre, its carved stone front built from 1605 to 1765 and its interior gilded floor to ceiling in gold leaf on a red ground. The 's neo Gothic towers, built mostly in the 1890s and 1900s, rise above the rooftops and show from several streets at night. opens in front of the San Francisco monastery church, the largest square in the old town, with the whitewashed Capilla de Cantuña chapel at its south end.
runs narrow and pedestrian at the foot of the Panecillo. Close two storey colonial fronts line it in a tight row, with painted shutters and small iron balconies overhead. Strings of café lights cross the street between the buildings along its length.
Shot in Centro Histórico de Quito
Taylor Hackford's Proof of Life used Plaza de San Francisco for one of its most visible sequences, with the San Francisco church facade filling the background of the square. The 2000 production filmed there as part of a fictional South American setting rather than standing in for one named city.
Proof of Life, 2000
Plaza de San Francisco
The scene plays out across the open paving in front of the San Francisco church, with the church's carved stone facade and bell tower behind the actors. Cast and crew shooting here were caught in tear gas drifting from a protest several blocks away during the shoot. Street View
Cusco's Plaza de Armas pairs a colonial church and plaza with the same Jesuit facade type as Quito's La Compañía, and The Motorcycle Diaries used that plaza and the streets off Calle Inca Roca. Both cities sit at a similar Andean altitude with a colonial grid laid over an earlier base, so the stonework and light read the same way on camera. Cusco's lower walls are often bare dressed Inca stone rather than whitewashed plaster, which a low or wide shot reveals, so keep the frame on the upper storeys and the church facade. Try searching colonial church and plaza now.
La Antigua Guatemala in Sacatepéquez, Guatemala
Antigua's compact colonial grid of low baroque church facades matches Quito's scale block for block, and La Antigua Guatemala stood in for itself throughout Hunting Party and The Silence of Neto rather than needing another city's streets. Spanish colonial church facades like La Merced and San Francisco read close to La Compañía and the San Francisco complex here. Antigua sits flat in a valley with three volcanoes on the skyline, which Quito's own hillside backdrop does not show, so keep wide shots angled up past the rooflines rather than out to the horizon. Try searching Spanish colonial church facades now.
Santo Domingo's Zona Colonial is a similarly dense 16th to 18th century Spanish colonial quarter, and its narrow colonial streets and plazas stood in for pre revolution Havana throughout The Godfather Part II. The scale of its churches and government buildings around the Parque Colón is close to Quito's own plazas. Santo Domingo sits at sea level with royal palms and flat streets, so a wide shot that includes Quito's hills or the Panecillo would give it away. Tight facade level framing holds up better. Try searching narrow colonial streets and plazas now.
