The church, and its rich internal ornamentation, completely covered with gold sheets, is one of the main tourist attractions in the city and an invaluable heritage, both artistic and economic, for the country.

However, in 1587 the chapter gave the Jesuits a piece of land in the northwest corner of Plaza Grande, but the Augustinians showed their disagreement with the decision; for this reason the cabildo chose to establish them in another lot located in the south direction of the Cathedral.

The problem with the acquired land is that it was crossed by the Zanguña ravine, which descended from the Pichincha volcano and crossed behind the Quito Cathedral, so priest Marcos Guerra[1] built several brick arches on it, in such a way that the ground remain at the same level and later the buildings of the College, the University, the residence of the Fathers, the House of the Students, the Hospital for the Elderly and the Procurement Center of the Mainas Missions in the Amazon could be raised without major problems.

In 1630, the new Bishop of Quito, Friar Diego de Oviedo, wrote to King Philip IV: "In this province there has been a University and General Studies of the Society of Jesus, with very eminent subjects who have run their chairs.

Priest Marcos Guerra arrived from Italy in 1636 to take charge of the construction, to which he imprinted the tastes and forms of the Renaissance, a style in which he had vast experience before becoming a clergyman.

These naves house six side chapels or altarpieces, smaller than those of the transept, but of delicate elegance, unrepeatable variety and an exultant Baroque, already Plateresque and Churrigueresque.

The transept, 26.5m wide, boasts an imposing dome 27.6m high and 10.6 in diameter, internally decorated with paintings, ornaments, medallions with figures of archangels and Jesuit cardinals.

However, the one in the transept is graceful on a fretwork tholobate with zigzag arch windows, separated by twin Ionic pilasters, crowned with its elegant twelve-light lantern and standing out on a roof adorned with barbicans, a curious medieval reminiscence widely used in Quitoan architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries, when she was not remembered in Spain.

While the structure of the temple betrays the Renaissance influence, which Priest Marcos Guerra brought to Quito from Italy; in the disposition of the frontispiece, it pays attention to the Baroque dynamism of the 18th century, which Bernini began with the twisted columns of the baldachin of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome".

The main entrance door is flanked by six Solomonic columns five meters high, fluted in their middle third, derived from those of Bernini on the altar of the Confession of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Over them runs an entablature reminiscent of the first body, and ends the whole in a semicircular tympanum intercut to fit a large modillion in the center, on which the bright bronze Jesuit cross stands out, on the characteristic groyne of the cresting.

The greatest characteristic of the internal decoration of La Compañía de Quito is its very Baroque forms in carved cedar wood, polychrome and bathed in 23-carat gold leaf on a red background.

When it began to rise, they wanted to make it of stone and brick, only in 1735 did they change the design to wood, with the guidelines of the Jesuit brother Jorge Vinterer, of German origin and whose carving took ten years (1735-1745).

In January In 1745, the famous artist Bernardo de Legarda, signed a contract with the Father Rector of the Jesuit Order by means of which he undertook to "Undertake the work of gilding in the tabernacle of the main altar of the Church of la Compañía".

Above this last body is the final cornice that serves as an impost for the interrupted double pediment, within which a group of angels holds a huge crown in their hands.

The side walls of the presbytery are lined with wooden cladding, with two openwork galleries on half pilasters that flank the exit doors; all this full of profuse stylized floral decoration.

Between this set and the altarpiece there are, along the wall, fourteen oil paintings with the busts of Jesus, Mary and the twelve apostles, forming an integral part of the decoration of the coating.

All the decoration of the presbytery has complete unity in its variety of forms, having used as the main motif the serpentine and acanthus foliage, which was treated with such preference and extreme delicacy in the Renaissance period.

There is no space in these altarpieces, no matter how small, that is not covered with ornamental work; the very interior of the niches is an emporium of foliage; the entablatures, a set of moldings enhanced with pearl fillets, eggs, flowers, darts, gallons, garlands and a thousand filigrees; Solomonic columns, a pure lattice of grape shoots and, some of them, bird handles.

During colonial times, this mampara fulfilled two main functions: the first was to prevent sound from entering or leaving, so that it would not disturb the parishioners during mass; and the second was to stop the entry of indigenous people who were not baptized.

It starts from a drum that rests on four pendentives adorned with scrolls that surround large elliptical medallions with braided molding, within which the polychrome image of the four evangelists has been represented in wood and half relief: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

A frieze of serpentine grapes and another divided into panels limited by a small braid and composed of a figurehead between two eagles with open wings, link the pendentives and the arches with a wooden balustrade propped on a cornice that runs above the drum, in which twelve large windows give light to the dome and allow you to admire its decoration.

The pilasters of the arcade bear, as an integral part of their decoration and attached to the wall, one of the richest jewels of Quitoan painting, The Sixteen Prophets, work of the great master Nicolás de Goríbar, an artist who flourished in the second half of the 17th century.

Despite the fact that with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, ordered by King Charles III of Spain due to the political conspiracies of the religious against the Enlightened Monarchy, many of the treasures of the order were auctioned or taken to Spain, where today they are important pieces in museums and even in several of the Royal Palaces of Madrid, there are two that have remained immovable over time: the remains of Santa Mariana de Jesús and the Painting of the Miracle of the Virgin of Sorrows.

When she was beatified in 1850, a Chapel was built on the south side of the Presbytery, where her remains were placed in a rich bronze chest carved in Paris by order of President Gabriel García Moreno.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed the sanctity of Mariana de Jesus; then the ark with its remains are deposited under the main altar, where they are now preserved; and the consecration of the church of La Compañía to the name of the first Ecuadorian saint is made.

[7] Since the beginning of the 20th century, another unexpected treasure has enriched the temple of La Compañía de Quito, and the then adjacent Colegio San Gabriel: the prodigy of the Painting of the Sorrows, which presided over the dining room for the boarding school.

Restless, they notify the Father and the Brother who were watching the dinner; they approach incredulously, but they observe the same prodigy, which lasts for about fifteen minutes with the image of the painting opening and closing its eyes, before the children and the clerics.

Word of the alleged miracle spread through the city, people were moved; but the ecclesiastical authority, which was, due to the vacant seat, the Capitular Vicar, Monsignor Ulpiano Pérez Quiñónez, orders the removal of the painting and not give any publicity to the case, until the necessary inquiries are made first.

The thing was examined by ecclesiastics, religious and professional experts, excluding the Jesuits; the statement was heard, one by one, separately, from all the schoolboys, the Father and the Brother, and the employees who saw the miracle: all the testimonies were unanimous, concordant, simple or naive, like children between 10 and 17 years old .