The Basilica of the National Vow rises above the historic centre of Quito with the full apparatus of Gothic revival architecture: twin west towers, a long nave, pinnacles, flying buttresses and stained glass. Its most distinctive invention is local. Where a European cathedral would carry gargoyles in the form of monsters, this one substitutes the fauna of Ecuador, so that iguanas, tortoises, condors, monkeys and armadillos project from the stonework, a national bestiary translated into medieval form. The interior is vast and vertical, and the towers can be climbed, giving views over the tiled roofs of the old city and the volcanoes beyond. The episode uses the basilica to tell a wider story: how a young republic chose a European architectural language to express a national religious vow, and how it made that language its own in the detail of the carving.
