San Pedro de Riobamba

San Pedro de Riobamba is the capital of Chimborazo Province in the Republic of the Equator (Ecuador) and is located higher than 2700 meters, but below still taller peaks of the Andes. It had a population of about 145 thousand in 2013.¹ It is a former capital of the state of the Puruhá ethnic group, and later of the Shyrisate (Kingdom) of Quito.² The Incas conquered the city by around the end of the 15th century. When the Spanish took the area they founded Riobamba in 1534 on the ruins of the old city. The colonial town, already small, suffered losses from an earthquake in 1797.

External references

Riobamba city scape with the backdrop of the Andes

Historical maps

Footnotes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riobamba, accessed 10/31/2013.
2. Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987), "Cities of the Americas". Chandler does not explain his derivation of the figures for 1300 to 1487, though on pg. 260 he says that Riobamba displaced Quito as capital of the Shyrisate in 1370. His source for the status is Juan de Velasco, Historia del Reino de Quito, who wrote in the 18th century. Velasco's conclusion that a substantial kingdom existed has been disputed on the grounds of insufficient physical evidence. In any case the contemporaneous names of the kingdoms, conventually called Puruhá and Quito, are unknown. The wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riobamba, says that the Incas had to form an alliance with the people of Quito (who Chandler says were subjects of Riobamba) in order to conquer Riobamba. This narrative supports Riobamba's cultural centrality, although that still does not prove it a large city. (I accessed the wikipedia article 11/5/2013.) Chandler's lists put Riobamba in a tie for largest city in what is now the Republic of the Equator in 1300, and an undisputed largest in 1400 CE.