The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo is a tract of land owned by the prefecture of the province ofPichincha, 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 andconcrete and covered with cut and polished andesite stone. The monument was built to commemorate the first Geodesic Missionof the French Academy of Sciences, led by Louis Godin, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine. The older monument was moved 7 km to an small town near there called Calacalí.
Actually, the UNASUR headquarters is under construction. Contrary to popular belief, there are only two points of interest positioned exactly on the equator: the Catequilla archaeological site, and the Quitsato Sundial.
