Gold Museum

Bogotá is full of fabulous stories that tell you about an enigmatic past and vestiges that prevail over time. In the city, you will find a mythical, legendary and unique setting that will surely make you relive the legend of El Dorado up close.

The Bogotá Gold Museum preserves the world's largest collection of pre-Hispanic goldsmiths –34,000 pieces of gold and tumbaga– and is a must-see scene on your visit to the capital of Colombia.
Each piece that rests in the Gold Museum is an exceptional testimony of the cultural richness and the variety of visions of the world that existed in Colombia thousands of years before the Spanish arrival. This is, without a doubt, a magical setting that you must know.

In pre-Hispanic times, indigenous societies, fascinated with gold, exploited deposits and used various techniques to forge sophisticated objects that today are a vestige of their customs and beliefs. The indigenous heritage remains in this capital scene full of history and legend everywhere.
In addition to the gold and tumbaga pieces, the Gold Museum has 20,000 lithic, ceramic and textile objects that different pre-Columbian cultures made: Muisca, Tayrona, Quimbaya, Calima, Zenú, among others.

Two pieces are essential in your visit to the Gold Museum in Bogotá. The first is the Poporo Quimbaya: a thousand-year-old container of harmonious proportions, particular color and a unique melting technique. This ornament was used as a container for the mambeo of coca leaves during indigenous religious ceremonies and was made around 300 AD. Undoubtedly an icon of the museum, of Bogotá and of course of the country.
The second piece is the Muisca Raft, an iconic figure that symbolizes the Legend of El Dorado; The raft represents a ritual in which the caciques submerged themselves in the water with golden garments to implore the gods for a fertile harvest. An emblem!
Each of the pieces that the Gold Museum conserves has a biography that narrates its creation process; The hands of ancient artisans stand out there and their arrival at the museum is exhibited, by means of collectors, archaeological researchers, among others.

The Gold Museum is located in Parque de Santander, on the corner of Calle 16 and Carrera 5, in the heart of Bogotá and operates in two buildings: one opened in 1968, declared a Site of Cultural Interest, and the other completed 40 more years late, in 2008. Both designed by Colombian architect Germán Samper Gnecco.
The collection of the Gold Museum began to take shape in 1939, but it was only in 1959 that the institution began to operate on a regular basis, allowing Colombians and foreigners to discover the most precious archaeological treasures of the nation.

 

To date, the Gold Museum has presented more than 220 exhibitions from its collections in international museums - the British in London, the Ethnological in Berlin, the Louvre in Paris, among others. This has allowed, in addition to exposing the cultural wealth of Colombia in other countries, that the museum exhibits an international sample annually; an opportunity that has resulted from the exchange of exhibitions carried out with museums abroad.
Thus, the Colombian public and foreign visitors have been able to witness impressive displays on the slave process in France from the Nantes History Museum; Representations on the artistic history of the dragon in China, from the Neolithic to the present, from the Shanghai Museum, among others.
Four blocks from the Gold Museum, in the cultural block of the Banco de la República, you will find the Casa de Moneda Museum, a Bogota scene where the first gold coins minted in America in 1622 are exhibited. Also, very close to there, it locates the Botero Museum, which preserves 87 works from the personal collection of universal art of the master Fernando Botero and about 120 pieces, including oil paintings, drawings and sculptures, made by himself. So prepare everything to discover more treasures in the Capital of Colombia. #SeeYouInBogotá

 

Seguir leyendo