Chimbacalle, Quito — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Chimbacalle?

Chimbacalle station dates from 1908. The Estación de Tren de Chimbacalle was the Quito terminus of the Ferrocarril Transandino del Ecuador, the 452-kilometre line up from Guayaquil that was begun in 1872 and carried over a summit above 3,600 metres; the building is now a heritage site reopened to the public. A second door opens in the Ciudadela México, where the Teatro México was rebuilt from the old Cine México at Tomebamba y Antisana and reopened in June 2008.

Third comes the Museo Interactivo de Ciencias, installed in the sheds of the La Industrial cotton spinning and weaving mill, and the Chimbacalle trolleybus stop links all three to the rest of the city.

What is the history of Chimbacalle?

Chiriyacu means cold water in quichua. The parish name itself joins the quichua chimba, the side opposite, to the Spanish calle, and an older form, Pillcokancha, is recorded for the same ground. Everything after that dates from the railway: the first steam train into Quito arrived on 25 June 1908, and mills, textile works and repair yards followed the freight, pulling a working population into new blocks beside the tracks.

Ciudadela México was laid out in 1941 under mayor José Chiriboga on 34.5 hectares that had until then been called Textil, after the La Internacional, Pinto and Victoria factories. Ciudadela Pío XII went up in the 1960s on Banco Ecuatoriano de la Vivienda money, and Chiriyacu held the city's Camal Metropolitano from 1949 until 1996. The parish has its own song too, the pasacalle "Chimbacalle de mi vida", written by Marcial Salas Mancheno to music by Rodrigo Barreno and sung by the Dúo Benítez-Valencia.

Where is Chimbacalle?

Chimbacalle lies in the centre-south of Quito, in Pichincha Province, Ecuador, inside the Eloy Alfaro zonal administration and crossed by the Río Machángara, with La Magdalena, San Bartolo and La Ferroviaria along its borders.