History of the Middle of the World / ECUADOR

The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo is a piece of land owned by the prefecture of the province of Pichincha, Ecuador. It is located in the parish of San Antonio in the Metropolitan District of Quito, north of the city of Quito.

The main attraction of the place is the monument to the Middle of the World, which aims to highlight the exact location of the equator or equator, from which the country takes its name, and also highlight the geo-Spanish mission of the century XVIII which located the approximate site through which the equinoctial line passes.

There is also the Ethnographic Museum Mitad del Mundo, a museum about the indigenous ethnography of Ecuador. A small city surrounding the monument acts as a tourist center, offering a replica of a Spanish colonial city called "Ciudad Mitad del Mundo".

Within the Mitad del Mundo City there are four pavilions with permanent exhibitions. The Guayasamín Pavilion which has an exhibition of different works of the famous Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamín.

Another of the pavilions is the Pavilion of France, where the French Geodesic Museum is located. In this it exhibits all the information about the studies of the Geodetic Mission and information about the Paris Academy of Sciences. There is also the Pavilion of the Sun where information about the cities of Guayaquil and Cuenca, the two most important cities of Ecuador apart from its capital, Quito, is exposed.

Other permanent tourist attractions are the Planetarium, a model of all colonial Quito in miniature, and the Insectarium: the First Entomological Museum of Ecuador, where the vast and diverse entomofauna existing in Ecuador is being collected. There are exhibits of live and dissected insects.

In addition to these permanent attractions, weekends and holidays always hold music festivals, dance performances and other artistic expressions in the town square.