The City Museum (Museo de la Ciudad) occupies the former Hospital Real de San Juan de Dios, the oldest hospital in Quito — a colonial building that treated patients from its founding in 1565 until the 1970s. The building itself is remarkable: a series of interconnected colonial courtyards with elaborate stone carvings and wooden ceilings that have survived five centuries of continuous use.
The museum's permanent exhibition covers Quito's history from the pre-Hispanic period through the present in a series of atmospheric rooms and courtyards. It is not the most technically sophisticated museum in the city, but the setting — patients' wards converted into exhibition spaces, the old pharmacy still intact, the hospital chapel with its painted ceiling — gives a vivid sense of colonial Quito's social world. The café in the main courtyard is one of the better options for lunch in the southern Historic Centre.