Riobamba years later away from its original location (near a village named Cajabamba on the plains of San Antonio de Aguíscate). The city still retains much architecture from the Spanish period. In the Ecuadorian War of Independence Riobamba first declared independence on November 11, 1820 but was soon retaken. The city finally became part of an independent Gran Colombia in 1822, and then a separate Republic of Ecuador in 1830. On 20 November 2002, 7 people were killed and hundreds wounded when an explosion in the munitions depot at the Galapagos Brigade arsenal in Riobamba set off a series of blasts.
Gran Colombia title of his archive of his revolutionary activities. Simon Bolívar and other Spanish American revolutionaries also used the word "Colombia" in the continental sense. The establishment in 1819 of a country with the name "Colombia" by the Congress of Angostura gave the term a specific geographic and political reference. The Republic of Colombia comprised more or less the former territories of the Viceroyalty of New Granada (1739-1777), which it claimed under the legal principle of "uti possidetis". It united the territories of the former Third Republic of Venezuela, the United Provinces of New Granada, the former Royal Audiencia of Panama