Historic Centre of Santa Ana de los Ríos de Cuenca
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How it came to be
Cuenca lies in a valley ringed by Andean mountains in southern Ecuador. It began as a Cañari settlement, and after the Inca conquered the Cañari in the 15th century it became the regional centre of Tomebamba. The Inca ruler Tupac Yupanqui ordered a grand city called Pumapungo built there, but by the time the Spanish arrived only ruins remained.
The Spanish town was founded on 12 April 1557 by Gil Ramírez Dávalos on the orders of Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, Viceroy of Peru. It followed the strict planning guidelines issued thirty years earlier by Charles V, and its orthogonal grid has been kept for 400 years. Much of its architecture dates from the 18th century and was modernised in the 19th, when the city grew rich exporting quinine and straw hats.
Cuenca won its independence on 3 November 1820 and became one of the three provincial capitals of the new republic. Its first university was founded in 1867. Now the country's third city, it is still where local artisans weave the straw hats known around the world as Panama hats. The historic centre was inscribed in 1999.
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