Gold MuseumMuseo del Oro

Gold Museum in Bogotá was founded in 1939 by the Banco de la República and expanded in 1968 into Colombia’s leading collection of pre-Hispanic goldwork. Its tunjos, pectorals, masks, and animal forms reveal Muisca, Quimbaya, Zenú, and other societies for whom gold was less money than a sacred substance—offered to lakes and ancestors, worn as rank, and used to stage ritual transformation behind the El Dorado legend. For many Colombians, it anchors national memory in Indigenous cosmology and technical brilliance.