Gold Museum - Museo del Oro, Bogotá

The Central Bank opened this museum in 1939, and it is fantastic. There are about 30,000 items on display. Photos without flash are allowed.

Tues-Sat, 8 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sundays, 10-4.
Admission-3000 CUP (Over 60-free)

Address: Carrera 6, no.15-88 (Wheelchair access from 16th St.)
(571) 3432222
www.banrep.gov.co/museo

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Bogota's Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) houses the finest collection of pre-Columbian gold in the world, boasting 33.000 individual pieces, from simple earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings and figurines to some of the most beautifully crafted breastplates and masks. The exhibition offers insight into the historical, geographical and social development of pre-Columbian cultures through stone, clay, bone, textiles and, of course, gold.

On the first floor is the museum's main entrance, the shop and a restaurant. As it started to rain I decided to have a lunch. I had pasta with broccoli, feijoa juice and espresso, and paid 19.000 COP. The food was nice but quite expensive for Colombian standards.

The exhibition begins on the second floor and continues on the third. The most beautiful collection is housed in a huge vault on the third floor. There is the magical Salon Dorado with breathtaking display featuring 8.000 pieces of shimmering gold.

The Museo also offers special tours, educational programs to students and artistic videos about the most important gold pieces of the museum.

It is open Tue-Sat 09:00am-06:00pm, Sun and public holidays 10:00am-04:00pm (closed Mon). Entrance is 2.700 COP (December 2008) and it's free on Sunday.

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Bogota is the main urban center of the third largest country in South America and hence museums and other art venues are likely to fill the agenda of the visitor. The Gold museum is an obvious choice for obvious reasons - there is hardly any competition for this kind of collection anywhere in the world. Brushing aside the fact that as in many other museums of some stature, what is on display is a small portion of what is in the vaults, one can still marvel at the sheer scale and quality of the objects available for viewing. It is as if the regular Spanish gold digger and faith broadcaster’s wildest dreams have come true. Gold, gold and again gold sumptuously displayed and flooded in gold light drapes the rooms wall to wall. What makes you wonder is that these are the last remnants of indigenous gold production and considering that supposedly vast quantities were shipped to Spain, used for gilding of churches or plundered by pirates, it is stupefying to realize that there were untouched tombs around that yielded their treasures in a different era and blessed us with the chance to admire them.

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Ah, the lure of gold. Botero is free but gold, baby, never is. Yes, the price is an extortionate by Colombian standards $2 but for it you get to gaze at more gold than you even knew existed. More than fifty-five thousand pieces of it and other rare artifacts dot this admittedly impressive museum that is not only Bogota's but probably Colombia's most popular. You could literally spend all day in here though personally I was bored after two hours. Yes, even in the face of all that gold, I had to cry “no mas.” Maybe I should have opted for the audio English tour since all signs are in Spanish but paying another $3 seemed like highway robbery when they were already housing all this gold and I knew I could have a couple Club Colombia's for the same money.

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A fascinating museum that holds a collection of emeralds (4 of the largest in the world are on display here) and over 10000 gold pieces. The collection traces its beginnings back to the Quimbay and Chibcha Indian tribes. On the ground floor you will find antique pottery dating back 1000 years most if it used in burials. The most exciting part of the museum is on the third floor and when you walk up the stairs on front of you are armed guards.. guarding the vaults. The doors are inches thick, when you enter its in complete darkness and the doors are closed behind you? the room is slowly illuminated by the site of gold everywhere it's truly amazing and overwhelming. English speaking tour guides will give you all the history. You can also buy replicas in the souvenir shop and many different books in relation to the museum.
Adults Col$2.800
Sunday is Free for all
Also in the Museum is a new restaurant that l must say was very impressive. If your prepared to wait for 20 minutes it really is worth it. the food is delicious, the restaurant itself is also very clean and tidy with an impressive service. You don't have to pay into the museum if you want to eat there.

Open Tuesday to Sunday, same opening times as the Museum.

The telephone number of the restaurant is (571) 2829205.

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One of the top museums in Bogota is the Museo del Oro, the Gold museum - with a large exhibition of gold artefacts from 500 B.C up to the Spanish conquest of Colombia.

The building that houses the Museo del Oro is temporarily closed for renovation - but it is still possible to see its most significant pieces in the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República (on the 2nd floor), located opposite the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango and right before the Donacion Botero.

The selection that you can see aims at covering the most important gold jewels and sacred objects of all native populations that used to live in Colombia. of particular interest are the gold crowns tat were used by the rulers of each population

The museum is open from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. every day except on Sunday, when it closes at 5 p.m. It's closed all day on Tuesday and entrance is free. Photos are allowed, provided you don't use a flash.

When I asked people in Bogota what museum was a true must see, most responded with "the Gold Museum." Unfortunately, my time was short here and when I did make rushed attempt to visit, I realized that the museum was being renovated and that it had been moved to a temporary space until the new facility was completed. As a result, we didn't get to visit, but if you're in Bogota, I would definitely check for the latest information on the museum and visit if possible. The collection of Pre-Colombian artifacts in impressive and the gold collection is among the finest in the world.

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The Gold Museum in Bogotá has got a fantastic collection of gold objects from many pre-Hispanic cultures in Colombia. It is displayed in a very good way and the different cultures are presented. Altogether the museum has got around 50 000 objects of gold, wood, pottery, textile and stone in its collection. To be able to show more the museum is now building more galleries for exhibitions which should be ready in 2008. The gold museum in Bogotá is one of the most important gold museums in the world, if not the most important one. Don’t miss it!

I visited the Gold Museum on a holiday and then admission was free. There was a lot of visitors, but I arrived early and then there was no queue jet. When I left the museum there was a long line of people outside waiting to enter.
The museum is closed on Mondays. It is open Tuesday - Saturday between 9 - 18, and on Sundays (and holidays) between 10 - 16.

Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) of Bogota is definitely recommended as it contains (I didn't count but I read from the guidebook) more than 35,000 pieces of pre-Columbian gold work.

But it is not the mere huge number of gold pieces that impresses. It is how fine and intricate these gold pieces that impresses.

Apparently, every technique of goldwork known currently to modern goldsmiths had apparently been adopted by these ancient pre-Columbian cultures. Astounding!! To these people, gold symbolizes the life-giving energy from the Sun.

There is one famous display of a tiny boat with very very very very fine and wonderful details that shows the ceremony of throwing gold into Lake Guatavita as an offering to the gods.

In a fortress-like room, the guards will allow about 20 people to enter, before closing the door. There, you stand in the dark with some perplexity and suddenly, the lights come on around the room, showcasing an assortment of splendid bracelets, earrings, necklaces, breast plates, masks, figurines and rings.

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The Museo Del Oro is supposed to be the most important gold museum in the world, containing over 34,000 peices of gold.

The admition price is cheap (though I don't remember exactly). Once inside, the first floor consists largely of pottery items from before the Spanish arrived on the scene. Moving on to upstairs is where most of the gold is, though lookout, as you could easily miss the two main exibits!

From pictures I had seen on brochures, they have this boat made of gold. I was expecting something a little bigger than what it was, just a few centimetres long and hiding away in the dark. The other is a vault containing thousands of peices of gold. The doors will invariably be closed, and the guard didn't tell me I could go in there. I just happened to be lucky that some folks came out while I was standing there, so then I knew I could go in. After the vault on the right is a sort of 'multimedia' room, containing computers which you can use to look up info on the gold peices and whatnot. There is also a short computer animated video depicting a 'shamanic flight' and how some of the gold peices tie into this.

Tue-Sat, 9am-6pm. Sun, 10am-4pm.