Casa Gangotena

Casa Gangotena is Quito's premier boutique and the only Relais & Chateaux in the capital — a restored 1920s mansion on the southwest corner of Plaza San Francisco in the UNESCO Old Town, on the doorstep of the great San Francisco church and convent. Thirty-one Art Deco rooms and suites spread across three floors, averaging around thirty-five square metres, with marble baths and soundproofing, the best of them facing the plaza and the church towers. A roof terrace looks over the bell towers, the Panecillo hill and the Pichincha volcano, a walled palm garden centres on an original fountain, and the kitchen plates Ecuadorian cocina mestiza, the layered cooking of the highlands. Quito was the world's first UNESCO World Heritage city, and the hotel sits at the heart of it, around forty minutes from the airport, on a bed-and-breakfast base. It pairs naturally with Mashpi in the cloud forest and a Galapagos hotel in one Relais & Chateaux itinerary — made for couples and culture travellers who want the finest boutique address in Quito's old quarter. Quito was the first city inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, in 1978, and Plaza San Francisco is its grandest colonial square; the gold-leaf La Compania church, the Panecillo hill and the markets all lie within walking distance, with the equator monument and Otavalo's great indigenous market a drive beyond.