Gold Museum

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Gold Museum Museo del Oro

Established	1939
Location	Bogotá, Colombia
Director	Clara Isabel Botero
Website	Gold Museum

The Gold Museum (from the Spanish El Museo del Oro) is a museum located in Bogotá, Colombia. It displays an extraordinary selection of its pre-Hispanic goldwork collection - the biggest in the world - in its exhibition rooms on the second and third floors. Together with other pottery, stone, shell, wood and textile archaeological objects, these items, made of what to indigenous cultures was a sacred metal, testify to the life and thought of different societies which inhabited what is now known as Colombia before contact was made with Europe.

The Bank of the Republic began in 1939 helping to protect the archaeological patrimony of Colombia. The object known as Poporo Quimbaya was the first one in a collection. It has been on exhibition for 65 years.

It houses the famous Muisca's golden raft found in Pasca, Colombia, that represents the El Dorado ceremony. The heir to the chieftaincy assumed power with a great offering to the gods. In this representation he is seen standing at the centre of a raft, surrounded by the principal chieftains, all of them adorned with gold and feathers.