Gold Museum

In front of you is one of Colombia's most visited museums and a stop almost nobody skips. It holds some 34,000 pieces of gold and tumbaga and around 25,000 objects of pottery, stone, shell, bone and textile from cultures such as the Quimbaya, Muisca, Tairona, Calima and Zenú.

1It all began with a poporo

In December 1939, the Banco de la República bought an extraordinary piece: the Quimbaya poporo, a gold vessel for the lime that was chewed with coca leaf in rituals. The collection was born with it. The first exhibition was set up in 1940 in the bank's boardroom, and the museum opened to the general public in 1959.

2A building for gold

The 1968 building and its extension, completed in 2008, bear the signature of the architect Germán Samper, who also worked on the neighbouring Avianca building and the Luis Ángel Arango Library. The renovation reorganised the visit into galleries devoted to metalworking, to people and gold, to cosmology and to symbolism.

For pre-Hispanic peoples, gold was not money: it was a material linked to the sun, to power and to transformation, offered to the gods and taken to the grave.

The visit ends in the Offering room, a dimly lit space where light and sound evoke the ceremonies held at sacred lakes. Many visitors remember it as the best part of the museum.

3What to look for

• Parque Santander, with the statue of the general sculpted by Pietro Costa and unveiled in 1878.
• The Avianca building, the late-1960s skyscraper that towers over the park.
• The Quimbaya poporo and the Muisca raft, if you go in: two pieces the museum always keeps on permanent display.