Quito’s Plaza de la Independencia, with the city’s winged Virgin of Quito statue on a hilltop in the distance.  Hanging lanterns illuminate La Ronda Street, a cobblestone walkway dating back to the colonial era, where couples and children stroll past coffee shops and courtyard restaurants, and pots of red and pink flowers rest on wrought-iron balconies overhead. A woman stands in an arched doorway, stirring a spoon in a big wooden jar of hot orange juice for canelazo, a local warm beverage made with cinnamon and sugar-cane alcohol.  Perched at 9,000 feet on a narrow Andean plateau, Quito was one of the first cities to be designated a World Heritage site back in 1978. Unesco calls its Old Town section, filled with ornate Spanish-colonial churches and monasteries from the 16th and 17th centuries, the “best-preserved and least-altered historic center in Latin America.” But until recently, crumbling buildings, diesel-fuel pollution and a high local poverty rate outshone the city’s charms. Most visitors in Quito were simply stopping over on their way to the Galapagos Islands or elsewhere in Ecuador, and many tour books and guides deemed the historic section too dangerous for tourists after dark.  What to do: Local police, including some who speak English, give free tours of the Old Town, starting at the Visitor’s Center on Plaza de la Independencia (www.quito.com.ec). Take the Teleferiqo cable car up Guagua Pichincha; at the top are hiking trails, cafés and an oxygen bar, for those bothered by the 13,000-foot altitude.  Where to stay: Hotel Patio Andaluz, in a historic Old Town building, is built around a blue-tiled courtyard. The staff wears colonial-era costumes and local artwork decorates the rooms—large wooden rosaries hang over the beds. Rates start at $200 a night (Tel.: 011-5932-228-0820; hotelpatioandaluz.com). In Quito’s modern section, Le Parc Hotel has 30 rooms, a L’Occitane spa and a champagne bar on the roof; from $280 a night (Tel: 011-5932-227-6800; leparc.com). The NuHouse Boutique Hotel is in the Mariscal nightlife section. Weekends can be noisy; ask for a room facing the back; from $109 a night with breakfast. (Tel: 011-5932-255-7845; nuhousehotels.com.)  Where to eat: La Choza serves traditional Ecuadorean fare such as locra soup (with potato, milk, cheese and avocado) and Patito de Chancho Emborrajada (pig’s feet in Andean spices). Entrées start at about $8 (Tel: 011-5392-223-0839). Alkimia, new in Quito’s La Floresta neighborhood, has a young Peruvian chef who prepares Latin dishes with local ingredients, like seared tuna with quinoa. A seven-course tasting menu is $44. (Tel: 011-5932-252-7855.)  “It was like adventure tourism to go to the Old Town,” says Patricio Gaybor, marketing manager for Ecuador’s tourism ministry. Street gangs controlled the chaotic markets, and pickpockets were common. Even locals venturing there would leave purses and jewelry at home.  Hoping to overcome its rough image and draw more international tourism, Quito has spent hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up the historic center, restoring plazas and centuries-old landmarks and beefing up lighting and security. The rehabilitation accelerated in 2003, when Fonsal, Quito’s municipal cultural-preservation agency, began working with illegal street vendors—Quito calls them its “informal sector”—to move them peacefully into smaller markets created outside the district.  The efforts have helped revive tourism in Ecuador, where the industry’s revenue grew to $766 million in 2008 from about $400 million in 2000. Much of the gain, tourism officials say, has come from Americans, who seem to find Ecuador exotic yet accessible. Ecuador uses the U.S. dollar, it operates on Eastern Standard Time (though not daylight time) and there are direct flights from a few U.S. cities, including Miami, Atlanta and Houston.  Ecuador’s best-known attraction, the Galapagos Islands, with their blue-footed boobies and Darwin history, have limited growth prospects; because of overcrowding, they made Unesco’s 2007 list of endangered World Heritage sites. Quito is emerging as an urban alternative. A new international airport is set to open next year about 12 miles to the east. Boutique hotels are opening, and cutting-edge restaurants are serving upscale versions of locro, a thick potato soup, and ceviche, a cold fish dish often served with popcorn in Ecuador.  The city is a popular starting point for trips to Mitad del Mundo, or “Middle of the World,” the equatorial marker just outside the city, and to Cotopaxi National Park, home to an active volcano. Some travelers take excursions to accessible parts of the Amazon jungle and to Ecuador’s famed cloud forests, where an almost constant mist creates dense, lush greenery and diverse animal species including hundreds of types of birds. Hot springs, like Papallacta, are a short drive away, as is Otavalo, the huge outdoor market where local entrepreneurs sell everything from alpaca sweaters and beaded jewelry to livestock. The drive from Quito takes you through small towns where the local delicacy cuy (aka guinea pig) can be found roasting at the side of the road.  The altar at the Iglesia de San Francisco.  Most visitors tour at least one of Quito’s baroque churches. Among the oldest and largest is Iglesia de San Francisco, which Spanish conquerors built on the site of an Incan palace over the course of a century, starting in 1535 and adding the main cloister in 1605. (Parts of it are closed during a $2 million renovation, but the church’s museum and choir are open.) At the dome-ceilinged Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús, from 1605, ornate gold leaf covers almost all the interior, filled with detailed carvings and statues of angels and religious figures.  Early evenings are the liveliest, and loveliest, time to explore. Along the Old Town’s cobblestone streets, women prepare empanadas and fried corn in doorways. In the Plaza de la Independencia, candy sellers in felt hats with peacock feathers and boys with shoe-shine kits wander among pink-flowering trees. Overlooking the Old Town is the winged Virgin of Quito, the city’s signature statue, built on a hill that was considered sacred in pre-Incan times.  Quito can be difficult to navigate on foot. Cars and motorcycles often make blind fast turns, zooming inches away from narrow sidewalks crowded with pedestrians. Taxis are plentiful and cheap, though they sometimes double their rates for tourists. Quito is working to become more pedestrian-friendly; within the next few years, it plans to close several streets in the historic center to buses and cars.  The Nu House Boutique Hotel  Gail Fisher and John Kane, a couple from Alexandria, Va., recently spent three days in Quito before heading into Ecuador’s northern highlands to vacation at a hacienda, where they planned to hike and ride horses. “It’s beautiful,” Ms. Fisher said, resting on a bench in one of Old Town’s plazas. “It reminds us of Mexico City but smaller…and with more parks.”  Amid all the old-world charm, there are signs of the “informal sector.” Vendors wander the Old Town hawking everything from toilet paper to trembling puppies, scurrying away only halfheartedly when police approach. In Itchimbía Park, with a glass cultural center offering some of Quito’s best views, a small shack is home to several squatters; a line of colorful laundry swings in the breeze.  In Quito’s modern New Town, many of the concrete-and-glass structures—many built during the oil boom of the 1970s—are today blemished with graffiti and soot. Sections here also are targeted for renovation. In La Mariscal, Quito’s main nightlife area, the Plaza Foch has outdoor cafés with heat lamps for al fresco dining during chilly mountain evenings.  Old Town residents say it would have been hard to imagine all the tourists even a few years ago, when La Ronda Street (also known as Calle Morales) was rife with prostitutes and thieves. Vieres Caterine, who has lived and worked there for 48 years, says he used to close his small snack shop before sunset , and sometimes got into fights with thieves who entered the shop in broad daylight. Today, he stays open until 2 a.m. on weekends.  Some projects are still waiting their turn. Quito’s overcrowded jail is set to become a repository for historical documents, and the main bus station is set to become a parking area. Speaking through a translator, Carlos Pallares, the director of Fonsal, says, “We have been restoring [Quito] not just for the next generations, and not just for the aesthetic conditions, but to improve life conditions in the area. The way to improve that is to bring tourism.”  Write to Candace Jackson at candace.jackson@wsj.com
Ecuador’s capital, once rife with crime, is now much safer for tourists, offering an extensive Spanish baroque Old Town and a new crop of hotels and restaurants.