García Moreno Prison
A 19th-century panopticon prison that held ex-presidents and notorious criminals for 139 years before closing in 2014.
No public photograph yet
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Share a photoHistory & haunting lore
Designed by Danish architect Thomas Reed and completed in 1874, the prison operated until 2014, holding figures ranging from revolutionary leader Eloy Alfaro, killed by a mob after his imprisonment, to serial killers Pedro Alonso López and Daniel Camargo Barbosa. After inmates were transferred to a new facility, the complex briefly reopened as a museum staffed partly by former guards.
Guides on the now-discontinued tours described the belongings left behind in abandoned cells, from religious icons to old magazines, as a haunting window into the lives of the incarcerated, though the site's core draw was always its unvarnished criminal history rather than ghost stories.
Current site status
Closed to the public and abandoned in recent years, suffering deterioration and looting, with no current regular public access.