Qualla: Palacio de Carondelet

Palacio de Carondelet: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ivar Abrahamsen, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Simón Bolívar walked into the Presidential Palace in 1822, he was not easily impressed. The liberator had seen cathedrals in Caracas, government houses in Bogotá, the grand palaces of a dissolving Spanish empire. But something about Quito's building stopped him. He wondered, the record says, at its elegance and austerity. He asked who had overseen the renovation. The answer was the Barón Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet, the Spanish chairman who had hired architect Antonio García in 1801 to transform the earthquake-patched audience hall into something worthy. Bolívar gave the palace Carondelet's name. The name has stuck for more than two centuries, through every constitutional president and every dictator Ecuador has produced.

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Image: Ivar Abrahamsen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Palacio de Carondelet: Before the Palace

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kevin Gabbert - User: (WT-shared) Kevin James at wts wikivoyage, Public domain. The history of this building traces back to around 1570, when the Spanish Crown began buying up royal houses in the still-young city of Quito. The first seat of the Royal Audience operated near the convent of La Merced. When Diego Suarez de Figueroa, secretary of the audience, di...

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Image: Kevin Gabbert - User: (WT-shared) Kevin James at wts wikivoyage | Public domain

Palacio de Carondelet: The Baron's Renovation

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0. Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet was a well-traveled administrator. Before arriving in Quito in 1799 as chairman of the Audience, he had served as governor of Spanish Louisiana and Florida, leaving his name on avenues in New Orleans. In 1801 he hired Antonio García to rehabili...

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Image: Diego Delso | CC BY-SA 4.0

Palacio de Carondelet: The Building That Houses Every Administration

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bbb, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nearly every Ecuadorian head of state - constitutional, interim, or dictatorial - has worked from these rooms. Gabriel García Moreno, Camilo Ponce Enríquez, and Sixto Durán Ballén each left significant architectural changes. The Presidency, Vice Presidency, and Ministry of the In...

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Image: Bbb | CC BY-SA 3.0

Palacio de Carondelet: The Quiet Looting

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit H3kt0r, CC BY-SA 3.0. Molestina's investigation turned up something stranger than provenance questions. Most of the furniture visible today is new. Bronze fittings dating to García Moreno's era - the nineteenth-century hardware that should have survived across administrations - have been replaced by c...

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Image: H3kt0r | CC BY-SA 3.0