Todos los Santos (All Saints) &amp; Puente Roto (Broken Bridge) Historical Area

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Nearby attractions

Places to visit within 30 km.

De la Madre (Mother's) Park & Planetarium

Parque de la Madre, a quarry of Ecuadorian sports champions. There you will find the headquarters of the internationally famous "Luis Chocho" Walking School. On its old trails, the walker Jefferson Perez trained towards the first Olympic gold medal of Ecuador in Atlanta 96. The 500 m athletic track, three lanes, paved with special synthetic material, is used every day by dozens of professional and amateur athletes, to train for future competitions. The bicycle path allows alternative mobility. There is a multipurpose court, children's games and green areas to rest. Cuenca honored Jefferson Perez and coach Luis Chocho by erecting monuments to their sporting achievements. The Parque de la Madre, formerly called Parque del Ejército, changed its name in 1966, when its third monument was inaugurated, dedicated to La Madre, a bronze work by artist Paúl Palacio. The Park occupies 36,000 m2 between Florencia Astudillo Avenue, Doce de Abril Avenue and Federico Malo Street. It has two parking lots, one open-air and one underground. Important institutional and heritage infrastructures are built nearby, such as the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Industries, the Todos Santos religious complex, the CIDAP, the staircases, the Military Hospital and the stadium. An essential attraction of the sector is the Planetarium Ciudad de Cuenca. It carries out important educational and scientific dissemination work on the Universe, the stars and the solar system. It has state-of-the-art projection equipment that accurately replicates the position of the stars in the celestial vault. It carries out an agenda of complementary activities related to astronomy, such as conferences, talks, direct observation of the sky or through telescopes, audiovisuals. The capacity of its room is for 100 people. Inclusive space, accessible to people with disabilities.

0.21 Km.

Las Conceptas Cloister & Museum

The Museum of the Concepts of Cuenca permanently exhibits an outstanding collection of religious art. It has been in operation since 1986 in the southeast wing of the cloister of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, on the corner of Calle Hermano Miguel and Calle Juan Jaramillo. Its collection consists of 470 items, mainly paintings and sculptures, clothing, ornaments, furniture, chests, trunks and cabinets. Porcelain, ceramics, glass, opaline, miniatures and toys. The Museum's collections are part of the heritage that the nuns contributed over four centuries to the convent. The Museum has spaces for workshops and public events. It offers guide services and refreshments to visiting groups by reservation. Founded on November 3, 1986. It has 24 exhibition rooms, an auditorium that used to be a cemetery and a beautiful garden. The largest house in Cuenca in 1599 belonged to Doña Leonor Ordóñez. That house in the center of the city, between Presidente Cordova, Borrero, Juan Jaramillo and Hermano Miguel streets, was donated to the cloister convent of the Concepts. The daughters of Ordóñez, Jerónima, Leonor and Ángela were the first to enter the congregation. For 400 years the nuns have been doing embroidery, as a way of making a living. Today they continue to make banners, tablecloths, church vestments, dresses for images and liturgical vestments. In the convent there is one of the first bakeries in Cuenca, with wood-burning ovens. This activity is related to the "barrio de las panaderías" or Todos Santos, a place of much culture. The nuns continue the tradition of making "dulces de corpus". The monastery has the church with its typical belfry; main and secondary cloisters with porticoed corridors and transit passages or "chiflones" at the corners; spaces for praying the psalm and eating; the Chapter House, currently the convent's archive; novitiate cells, service areas and vegetable garden. The church itself is a work of art, with an important cultural heritage.

0.47 Km.

Pumapungo Museum & Archaeological Park

The Pumapungo Museum and Archaeological Park, an institution of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador, groups the state museums of the cities of Cuenca, Loja and Riobamba, guarding, protecting and disseminating the heritage and memory. The entity was inaugurated on November 4, 1980, as Museum and Library of the Central Bank of Ecuador, Cuenca branch. In July 1984, the Central Bank acquired from the Salesian community the historical heritage of Italian father Carlos Crespi, composed of 6,585 archaeological, colonial art and ethnographic assets. Other collections that make up the Museum's nuclear heritage fund belonged to the humanists Victor Manuel Albornoz and Luis Moscoso Vega. Businessman Guillermo Vázquez Astudillo made a generous donation of prehistoric ceramics. In the 1980s, the "Pumapungo Project" of archaeological prospecting was carried out to recover the vestiges of the ancient Inca city of Tomebamba and the Huayna Cápac Palace. In a part of this 7-hectare property, the Central Bank built its regional headquarters. In the mid-90s, the Museum began to operate in the new building, which is located south of the Historical Center of Cuenca (a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Since 2001, the Inka Gardens Ethnobotanical Park, with its Bird Rescue Center, has also been operating here. And you can also visit the Site Museum of the city of Tomebamba, which is a reconstruction of the vestiges of the old "tambo" (resting place for travelers) Inca. The Inca city of Tomebamna was the second administrative center of the ancient Andean empire. Another of the main attractions of the museum is the National Hall of Ethnography, an exhibition about the cultures of Ecuador, its traditions and customs. In the room "Pumapunku: worlds of memory", the archaeological findings of Pumapungo are exhibited. The museum has an art room. Three temporary exhibition rooms. The Victor M. Albornoz Library has a collection of 80,000 items: books, historical archive, historical photographic archive and map library. There is a collection of audiovisuals. Children's reading space. Information and lobby. Craft shop. Ans a small room for cultural events. Since 2010 the Museum is attached to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador. Its reserves, hidden from the eyes of the public, treasure hundreds of thousands of cultural objects of Ecuadorian heritage: religious and republican art, pictorial art, documentary, audiovisual, ethnography, archaeology. Also, inside the building of the Pumapungo Museum, the Central Bank of Ecuador manages a small Numismatics Museum. The complex also has the Pumapungo Theater, which has a capacity for 700 people and is equipped with modern technology to hold a variety of events.

0.53 Km.

Blacksmith's & Traditional Food District

Interest : Culture Type: Historic Neighborhood Friendly to: children, families, seniors, handicapped, pets Relevant categories: Cuenca's Historic District World Cultural Site by UNESCO - Within Cajas Massif Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO - Cultural National Heritage by the Ecuadorian Government Hours: Open all days 09:00 - 20:00 Las Herrerías. Special area of the World Cultural Heritage of Cuenca. Historically this street was part of the Qhapaq Ñan, later renamed Camino Real during the colonial period. According to the testimony of the German sage Humboldt, who walked the small street at the beginning of the 19th century, the vestiges of the famous Inca road between Ingachaca and Chaguarchimbana could be seen. It was one of the roads leading to the south. It passed through San Juan del Valle towards Loja and Peru. The other was the Loja Avenue. These two spaces concentrated the activities of blacksmithing and forging. The location of the blacksmith's trade concluded by giving it the name. In 1974 it was renamed Las Herrerías. Its previous name was Antonio Valdivieso. Part of its urban landscape are the old houses, most of them single-storey, the Casa de Chaguarchimbana and the Plaza del Herrero. The "blacksmiths" are the characteristic of the sector. The tradition of Las Herrerías was founded on the work of iron or metalworking. Individuals and families have dedicated themselves to this craft for several generations. The activity of blacksmithing disappeared and the craftsmen now make decorative objects for homes: ridge crosses, doors, grilles, locks, horseshoes, hinges, chisels, hoes, lamps, bars. The limit is creativity. Initially a man's trade, now the women keep it. Necessity obliges. The same families that were dedicated to blacksmithing, have turned their business around, opening food stores along the way, with a lot of tradition. 15 women have different options for a good breakfast, a mid-morning snack or for the reunion with friends and family in the evening. Mainly humitas or chumales, tamales, quimbolitos (all wrapped in a corn base), empanadas, tigrillos and bolones de verde with chicharon or cheese, corn and yucca tortillas, coffee, chocolate, melcocha, and ice cream. La Herrerías, another point in Cuenca that invites you to connect with the past, the calm and peaceful life of an Andean town. Source: Fundación Municipal Turismo para Cuenca

0.68 Km.

Tramway of Cuenca

Ecuador's first modern streetcar began operating in Cuenca. It connects the old Control Sur with the Industrial Park in the north. At its maximum capacity it can carry an estimated 120,000 passengers each day. During the trip, the urban train crosses the Historical Center of Cuenca, a World Heritage Site. This is its main attraction, since its panoramic windows allow passengers to observe, with total clarity, the architectural heritage of the city along 4 km. It is a first class tourist experience through Gran Colombia Street up and Mariscal Lamar Street down. In order to combat environmental pollution, vehicle congestion, noise and its associated nuisances, several municipal administrations made the political and planning decision to begin, continue and conclude tramway construction. The technical data of the work are: 27 stations, 20.4 km of round trip, track gauge of 143.5 cm, 22 to 25 km per hour of average speed. It takes 35 minutes to cover 10.7 km, from the first station in the south to the last station in the north. During peak hours, a tram passes every 6 minutes. A special roadway was built to protect the Historical Centre from vibrations and the energy is transmitted by a third underground rail. Today, thousands of reasons abound to justify the operation of a city train. The main ones highlight the use of advanced technologies, which make it an accessible, silent, fast, comfortable and environmentally friendly means of transport. Being a public company, it is also an alternative to transport in the hands of private monopolies. In Ecuador during the first half of the 20th century, similar experiences of public transport were implemented in the cities of Quito and Guayaquil. But the development of more modern infrastructure and the massive use of buses ended up bankrupting them. They stopped working around 1950.

0.69 Km.

Former Palace of Justice in Cuenca

The facade of the "Palacio de Justicia" (the Palace of Justice or Courthouse) in the city of Cuenca occupies one of the corners of the Calderon Park or Central Park. It is an emblematic building. Along with the New Cathedral, the City Hall and a group of houses in the Historical Center, they have made "the city of marble" another name well earned by Cuenca. In addition, this building is part of the area declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The symbolic meaning of the structure of the Courthouse is important in the urban area, because it was built between 1914 and 1925 as the headquarters of the University of Cuenca. So, for a long time, the building’s main function was to generate knowledge, education and culture. Today its lobby is used for cultural and social events, with main access to the Sucre Theater. Although its architectural style is neoclassical, the materials used to build it are of diverse origin, an eclectic combination of Sayausí marble, bricks produced at El Tejar, polychrome brass for the ceilings imported from France, and colored glass brought from Belgium. The humanist Octavio Cordero Palacios was appointed by the University Board as director of the work, based on the designs of the Quito architect Francisco Espinoza. Around 1950 and after 25 years of operation, the property was sold to the Ecuadorian state. The State assigned it to the Judicial Function, and it was named "Palace of Justice". It houses the Provincial Court of Justice of Azuay. The marble, the dome, the cornices, the giant columns, the heraldic shields, make its facade very striking. That is why it is one of the most photographed buildings in the Historical Center of Cuenca, a World Heritage Site.

0.73 Km.