The Governor's Palace is considered one of the most important public buildings in the city. Its architecture is unique.
La Torre Morisca o Reloj Público captado desde nuestro drone.
Texto: Patricio Añazco / Fotos: Jairo Cabrera.
The palace of the governor’s office is marked on a plan from 1770, which shows that the customs office and the accountant’s office were also located there. The last wooden building of the Governor’s Office burnt down in 1971. It was a three-storey building that housed various offices such as Political Headquarters, Registrar’s Office and others. For this reason, it was considered the most important public building in the city, as it housed many institutions.
Government and City Hall Palace.
The value of the Guayaquil Government Palace.
The Palacio de la Gobernación del Guayas is one of the most historically and culturally important buildings in the city, as it is here that the President of the Republic has his highest representative in the province. Although the building was only constructed in the last century, the functions of the governor’s office were located here years before the city’s independence.
Franz Theodor Wolf, a German geologist, botanist and explorer, was also in these lands and was well known for his scientific contributions to Ecuador. In 1892, he described the Governor’s Palace as one of the most impressive buildings in the city.
Governor’s Palace Building, 1939.
El gran edificio del Palacio de la Governación.
Looking inside the Guayaquil Government Palace.
The Governor's Palace today.
The current Renaissance-style building was begun on 23 March 1923 and completed in August 1924. The German architect August Ridder designed a first sketch of the new building, which was later modified by the Italian engineer Mario Gherardi, a technician of the Sociedad General de Construcciones. Emilio Soro Lenti, Italian. He carried out the decoration of the building in 1923.
The building that stands in the Plaza de la Administración, now the city’s main administrative area, was built at the same time as the Palacio Municipal. Aesthetically it is different, but volumetrically it is very similar. It is a single body whose interior is divided by a wide central gallery in the east-west and north-south directions. The Governor’s Palace of the Province of Guayas was declared a Cultural Heritage Site on 23 July 1982. Since 2014, the building has housed the Universidad de las Artes. You can discover this place and more on the following self-guided tour of downtown Guayaquil.
