Cementerio de San Diego

The Cementerio de San Diego is the final resting place for many famous figures from Ecuador’s past, including presidents, poets and military leaders. It’s also an eclectic mix of funerary architecture and traditions, which have slowly changed over the past 150 years.

The Cementerio de San Diego opened to the public in 1872, on land that had already seen its share of burials. Fifty years previously, fallen soldiers from the Battle of Pichincha – a turning point in Ecuador’s war of independence – had been buried here, the final resting place for some of the 600 men who died on both sides.