Iglesia de El Sagrario, Quito

The church was built on an arcade that closed the old Zanguña ravine, adjacent to the cathedral and that extended from the monastery of El Tejar sector to the west of the colonial city, to the area currently known as La Marín; these foundation works were directed by the Jesuit priest of Neapolitan origin, Marcos Guerra, and have a depth of fourteen meters on the south side and three meters on the north side, since they follow the level of decline that the aforementioned ravine presented.

On November 4, 1694, the architect José Jaime Ortiz arrived in Quito, from Alicante (Spain), who signed the contract for the construction of the building, which was planned according to the Italian Renaissance style that was fashionable at the time.

The Ecuadorian writer Julio Pazos Barrera describes the temple as follows: The central nave ends with a barrel vault and the two lateral ones are closed with small domes.

The interior main gate, the work of Bernardo de Legarda, is considered one of the richest manifestations of Quitoan Baroque, which Pazos Barrera describes as "a fabulous wood carving from the beginning of the 18th century.

The central vault, whose dome was decorated with frescoes that reproduce scenes from the Bible, was also commissioned to master Legarda in 1742, who assigned the painter Francisco Albán for that work.