Things to do in Cuenca

Landmark · The colonial grid between the Tomebamba and the Machángara

A UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999 — a compact grid of colonial and republican façades under three enormous blue-tiled domes.

Local tip: The domes were built too heavy for the planned bell towers, which is why the cathedral is famously unfinished at the top. Climb to the roof terrace for the view over the tiles, then walk down to the flower market beside the Carmen de la Asunción — it has run in the same small square for centuries and is the single best photograph in the city.

Nature · The cliff edge where the old city drops to the river

The colonial city ends in a wall of hanging houses above the Tomebamba, with a riverside path running the length of it.

Local tip: The path is how residents actually move around — walk it west towards Puente del Vado in the late afternoon when the light hits the façades. It is also where opportunistic bag-snatching happens after dark, so it is a daytime pleasure. In the wet months the river runs loud and fast enough to drown out the city.

Culture · At the eastern end of the Barranco, beside the Banco Central museum

The excavated remains of Tomebamba, the Inca city the Spanish found here — terraces, foundations and an ethnographic museum above them.

Local tip: This was intended as a second Cusco and was largely dismantled to build the colonial city on top, which is the single most interesting fact about Cuenca and is not on most itineraries. The museum is free and its ethnographic floor — including the shrunken heads — is better than the ruins. Go on a weekday morning.

Food · Centro Histórico, a few blocks south of the cathedral

Three floors of produce, juice counters and the hornado stalls where roast pork is carved to order with mote and potato cake.

Local tip: Go upstairs and eat where the people who work in the market eat, before eleven. Downstairs on the ground floor you will also find the limpias — traditional cleansings with herbs, eggs and a good deal of theatre — carried out in the open for anyone who asks, at a couple of dollars. It is not staged for visitors.

Nature · Half an hour west on the road to Guayaquil

Nearly three hundred glacial lakes on a high páramo plateau above 3,000 metres, with polylepis cloud forest in the folds between them.

Local tip: It is genuinely high — up to around 4,400 metres — so acclimatise in Cuenca first and do not treat it as a stroll. The weather turns in minutes and people get lost in fog on the marked trails every season. Take waterproofs whatever the sky in the city is doing, and register at the ranger station. The buses to Guayaquil will drop you at the entrance.

Neighborhood · On the ridge above the city, about ten minutes south

A viewpoint church on the hill with the entire city, its rivers and the mountains behind it laid out below.

Local tip: Everyone comes for the postcard view and then leaves. The reason to stay is the ceramics: the workshops around Turi, including some of the region's best-known artisan potters, are a few minutes from the mirador and almost nobody who takes the photograph walks over to them. Go late afternoon, do the workshops first and the view at dusk.