Ecuador - Mitad del Mundo

Gabriel Pástor Gross - Ecuador - 13.08.2012

Avenida de los Geodésicos. Ciudad Mitad del Mundo. 

The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo is a tract of land owned by the prefecture of the province of Pichincha, Ecuador. It is located at San Antonio parish of the canton of Quito, north of the center of Quito.

The grounds contain the Museo Etnográfico Mitad del Mundo, a museum about the indigenous ethnography of Ecuador.

The 30-meter-tall monument was constructed between 1979 and 1982 by Pichincha's Province Council to replace an older, smaller monument built by Government of Ecuador under the direction of the geographer Luis Tufiño in 1936. It is made of iron and concrete and covered with cut and polished andesite stone.

The monument was built to commemorate the first Geodesic Mission of the French Academy of Sciences, led by Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine. The older monument was moved 7km to an small town near there called Calacalí.