occasion, Friar Pedro Gosseal asked the "sirs of the Cabildo to grant him a piece of land for a garden to put it in the house of San Francisco because it makes a turn of the land and because it goes straight". A street from east to west, which kept the rhythm of the checkerboard grid and extension of the current calle Sucre, divided the Convent from the garden; this street must have been closed definitively in the middle of the 17th century, due to the construction of the two cloisters adjoining the main cloister. Construction First phase This stage covers a period of fifteen years: between 1535, with the construction of the church and provisional residence of the religious; between 1551 and 1575 the church, the facade and the atrium were raised; and the mid-1650s, with the construction of almost a dozen cloisters adjacent to the main one. This is considered the most important construction period of the complex. It is unknown who drew the original plans for the complex, the most accepted hypothesis is that they were sent from Spain, based on the topographical study of Ricke and Gosseal. It can also be perfectly assumed that architects came from Spain for the construction of the Franciscan monastery, architects who, knowing practically the land, knew how to take advantage of its inclination, for the design and execution of that admirable step and beautiful parapet, on which, the artistic and severe façade of the church is displayed. Although there are also those who support the theory that it was Ricke and Gosseal who did all the work from start to finish. However, the name of Friar Antonio Rodríguez, a native of Quito, and a great architect who flourished in the mid-17th century, as the author of a large part of the basilica and another jewel of Quito's colonial architecture, is preserved: the Church of Santa Clara. Among the papers in the convent's Archive, there is also a handwritten memoir from 1632 that speaks of Germán de Alemán, Jorge de la Cruz and his son Francisco, who worked on the construction of the basilica during the first period, that is, that of Friar Jodoco Ricke; for whose services he gave them, in agreement with the cabildo, some land from the quarries up towards Pichincha. In said Memory some of the works that those workers worked are specified: "(...) for payment of