of what was buried there. The construction of the basilica and convent of San Francisco began around the year 1537, just three years after the Spanish foundation of the city, with the completion of a temporary church that remained until 1550, when the construction of the current building began and which was completed around 1680. Although the building was officially inaugurated in 1705. The plots With the support of the European Franciscan Congregation, the Ghent's clerics Jodoco Ricke and Pedro Gosseal, who were cousins of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, they arrived in the city two years after its foundation, managed to acquire some plots on the southwest side of the Plaza Mayor de Quito, in the same place where one day the military seats of the heads of the imperial troops were: Chalcuchímac and Quizquiz. That is to say, the place had enormous historical and strategic significance for the indigenous people that the Franciscans wanted to evangelize. The thesis of the place as the center of the Inca and Caranqui cultures was reinforced after the archaeological studies carried out in the basilica on the occasion of its renovation, between 1983 and 1990, in which important ceramic pieces were found, belonging to those pre-Columbian cultures (and also panzaleas) under the nave, the cloisters, the orchard, the atrium and the square. The Cabildo of the recently created city of San Francisco de Quito, by virtue of the physical ordering of the city, initially assigned to the Franciscans an area of ​​land that was equivalent to two blocks, each 220 feet in length. However, in 1538, after successive adjudications by the same Cabildo, an area of more than three hectares was reached. In 1533, its limits, both to the north and to the south, coincided with those of the Plaza de San Francisco, so that the lot was facing the Plaza, without exceeding any of its sides (to the west it should reach up to the coristado). When, in 1537, Friar Jodoco Ricke asked the Cabildo to hand over, on the one hand, some land for the Yanakuna Indigenous who served the Basilica and, on the other hand, one more piece of land for it, which is deduced from the coristado to the current calle Imbabura. In 1538 the plot was extended to the north; that is to say, from the Main Cloister to the current dependencies of the Police; On this