Church of San Francisco

Facing Plaza San Francisco, the Church of San Francisco stands at the center of Quito’s vast Franciscan complex, begun in 1535 and reworked through the 16th–18th cc. Its Andean Baroque interior—gilded retablos, carved pulpits, and painted ceilings—turns doctrine into an immersive visual language, shaped by the Quito School and by Indigenous labor and invention under colonial rule. For many Quiteños it remains a defining emblem of the city, where faith, art, and power were fused into a New World image of heaven.