Since 1939, after four hundred years of stories about sacking, conquests and findings which sometimes were by chance, the official collection of the Gold Museum was started with the sponsorship of Banco de la República de Colombia. It opened in 1944 to special visitors of the Bank, and now it has a modern building downtown Bogotá, very close to its first location.

Considered as the most important collection of pre-Hispanic pieces of silver and gold in the world, the Gold Museum has more than 36,000 original gold pieces and numerous pieces of pottery and ceramics that illustrate the history of ancient societies, those societies which mastered the techniques and worked with precious metals to write their glorious past with fire and gold.

The museum, located at Santander park, in the historical downtown Bogotá, is the museum that receives the highest number of visitors, among the several museums of the Republic. It allows the visitor to have a unique experience through the different forms and techniques of gold and silver works, to learn more about the development of the ancient civilizations that inhabited the mountain regions and valleys of the Andes and the Caribbean coast.

There were characteristic groups of gold workers, using in most cases their traditional native names, who manufactured by means of complex techniques, different pieces that were used as personal adornment, as domestic utensils, as objects to perform different trades, offerings in funerals or in ceremonies to worship their gods, among which the sun was the most important.

Among the most common utility tools, there are tools for gold and silver work, needles and hooks, items for personal adornment such as combs, necklaces, earrings, nose rings, bracelets and bangles. In addition, there are bowls for ceremonial purposes, garments representing the power ideological orientation of priests and healers.

The “poporos” are among the most outstanding pieces of gold or silver work. They are lime (calcium carbonate) containers, which is blended with hayo (dried coca leaves) to produce the release of active substances of this sacred plant, for the ancestral practices associated with power, wisdom and contact with their gods.

Zoomorphic and anthropomorphic representations are also very common, exhibiting animals from the different habitats where these cultures were developed. They depict the power and symbiosis between heaven and earth, between gods and men, between light and darkness, thus presenting the complex dualities of the individual.

Among these ancient societies there is the Muisca, who inhabited the Cundiboya altiplano (in the middle of the Andes between the Departments of Cundinamarca and Boyacá); the Tolima, the ancestral people that lived at the banks of the Magdalena river; the Zenú or Sinú, industrious filigree artists of the Colombian Caribbean; the Calima, from the center part of the Cauca Valley (western south); the Quimbaya, old inhabitants of the current coffee lands, who were experts in gold metalwork, in making global forms and fine finishes, especially in polishing their poporos.

In addition, groups or cultures like San Agustín and Tierradentro (declared cultural heritage of mankind by Unesco) stand out, through which it is possible to learn about the development of stonework as funerary expression in dolmens and hypogea (underground tombs carved in rock) and big sculptures that represent especially the jaguar-man. It is important to mention the Tayrona, who always lived in Andes snow-capped mountains of Santa Marta, and whose descendents, the Koguí and the Arhuacos, are a living memory of this ancient culture.

The visit ends with the golden room, that recalls with songs and musical sounds of fotutos and ocarinas, the ritual practice of the muiscas caciques in a ceremonial bath in the cold waters of Guavita sacred lagoon.

The Gold Museum offers services such as publications, guided visits and audio-guides in several languages, shops of souvenirs and reproductions of the exhibited pieces, excellent high-quality items as souvenirs of this visit to the last redoubt of El Dorado. Likewise, it provides education support to students from schools and universities, fulfilling a real pedagogical function aimed at strengthening the nation’s cultural values. The visit to this museum is a must to all foreigners who come to Bogotá.

Ricardo Cifuentes Cuadros
DITUR - COLOMBIA