Gold Museum, Bogota
| Museo del Oro | |
View of the Gold Museum
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 Location within Colombia
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| Established | 22 December 1939 |
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| Location | Carrera 6 # 15-82 (Parque Santander) Bogotá,  Colombia
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| Coordinates | 4°36′06″N 74°04′19″W / 4.60167°N 74.07194°WCoordinates: 4°36′06″N 74°04′19″W / 4.60167°N 74.07194°W |
| Director | María Alicia Uribe Villegas |
| Public transit access |
 Museo del Oro
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| Website | Official website |
The Gold Museum (Spanish: El Museo del Oro) is a famous museum located in Bogotá, Colombia. It is one of the most visited touristic highlights of Colombia. The museum receives around 500,000 tourists per year.
The museum displays a selection of pre-Columbian gold and other metal alloys, such as tumbaga, work — the biggest collection in the world — in its exhibition rooms on the second and third floors. Together with 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 the conquest of the Spanish.
In 1934, the Bank of the Republic began 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 70 years.
The museum houses the famous Muisca golden raft found in Pasca in 1929, that represents the ceremony of the new zipa (ruler) of Bacatá, basis for the El Dorado myth. 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.
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Wikipedia