Iglesia y Convento de San Francisco, Quito

The San Francisco de Quito convent defined itself in its relations with the outside world according to three spaces:

• The Public Square (Plaza de San Francisco) was a purely urban space, demarcated and connected to various public activities (teaching, market, water supply).
• The Courtyard (El Atrio), where urban and some sacred functions met. Here, at least in the 16th and 17th centuries, ordinary people were sometimes buried. This space is entered through the convex staircase, designed by the Vatican architect, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
• The Church and its chapels (La Iglesia de San Francisco), which were considered sacred places.

Together, Church and Convent encompass three hectares including 13 cloisters (six of them major), three churches, and a large courtyard. In total, about 40,000 square meters of construction. San Francisco follows the classical typology of medieval monasteries. The main Church is the guiding axis and from there the cloister galleries extend: the refectory, the chapterhouse, and winery. These define a quadrangular courtyard, with the four respective pandas, or galleries: that of the chapter room, the refectory, the converts, and the mandatum. In addition to the basic dependencies of a convent, there were areas devoted to health care, education, crafts, a garden, and even a jail (to maintain strict discipline). The kitchen and dispensery operated in the cloister of services.

The facade of the main Church reflects, for the first time in South America, Mannerist elements, which later became a reference point for that style in the rest of the continent. The severity of the building's Renaissance and Mannerist exterior contrasts with the inner decoration of the Church, in which Mudejar and Baroque elements bathe the nave, chapels, and high altar in an exotic golden splendour. In its nave and aisles, the Church of San Francisco reveals its Mudejar (Moorish) coffered ceilings, lavishly decorated altarpieces, and columns fashioned in different styles. In the choir — original from the end of the 16th century — Mudejar details are fully preserved, although the central nave was brought down by an earthquake and then replaced by a Baroque coffered ceiling in 1770.

San Francisco houses over 3,500 works of colonial art, of varied artistic styles and techniques, most notably those of the famous Quito School of art, which had it genesis precisely here. Undoubtedly the most celebrated of these is the 18th century sculpture known as the Virgin of Quito, which has long been a kind of icon of the city. Here also is a magnificent Franciscan library, described in the 17th century as the best of the Viceroyalty of Peru.