Why it looks like this

Quito runs along a high Andean shelf at the foot of the Pichincha volcano, hemmed by the mountain on one side and deep valleys on the other. The result is one of the world's most elongated capitals: a narrow band of streets running north–south for tens of kilometres, now served by a metro line that simply follows the city's single axis.

At its heart is the best-preserved colonial centre in the Americas — the Spanish grid of 1534 draped over ravines — which in 1978 was inscribed by UNESCO alongside Kraków as one of the first two World Heritage cities.