The Martínez-Holguín House Museum in the Atocha parish, on the northern edge of the city, preserves the home of Luis A. Martínez, a turn-of-the-century Ecuadorian painter, novelist, and agronomist who is best known for his novel A la costa (1904), considered a landmark in Ecuadorian realism. The house gives a good sense of upper-class life in the provincial highlands at the end of the 19th century.
Martínez was a man of unusual breadth — simultaneously a politician, a coffee farmer, and one of the first writers to depict Ecuador's class conflicts with documentary realism. His paintings hang in the house and reveal another side of his talent.
The museum is a companion piece to the Juan Montalvo and Juan León Mera sites that make up the informal literary circuit of Ambato. Not far from the Atocha botanical garden, it can be visited on the same trip. Taxi from the centre is the easiest option.