The Church and Convent of San Agustín, on Chile Street in the Historic Centre, is one of the older and more historically significant colonial complexes in Quito, begun in the 16th century and substantially rebuilt in the 17th. The church's Baroque interior is less gilded than La Compañía but more sober and imposing, with a series of large paintings depicting scenes from the life of St Augustine by the Flemish artist Fray Pedro Gosseal and his Quiteño students.
The convent's cloister museum contains paintings from the Quito School and documents relating to the early period of the city's history. The capitular hall — where Ecuador's declaration of independence was signed in 1809 — is the main historical draw and contains painted portraits of the independence conspirators. The whole complex gives a good picture of the intellectual life of colonial Quito, when the Augustinian friars ran one of the major educational institutions in the city.