The colors of Quito: quick reflection on the color of the Historic Center’s architecture

Abstract

This article aims to analyze, from a historical perspective, the use of color in the architecture of the Historic Center of Quito. The author explains how, starting with a municipal ordinance in the 1960s, the polychromy of Quito’s buildings was dulled under a combination of white and indigo blue that had little to do with the use of color in different periods during which architectural monuments and houses were erected. At the end of the century, at the hands of the prestigious Gitty Institute, a research work on the use of color was carried out in Quito, revealing that the palette varied according to the time and the availability of pigments. Based on this, in more recent years, the mayor’s office carried out a “recovery of color” in Quito, trying to restore the chromatic diversity of its center, as another witness of the spatial coexistence of real estate of different times. Being in force for more than twenty years, however, the ordinance that determined the mandatory use of white and indigo blue, generated in the population a lack of knowledge about the city’s history of color.