Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú

Description:

• With such a mouthful of an official name, you might expect the National Museum of Archaeology, Anthropology, and History to be the Peruvian equivalent of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's not (especially because much of the museum's huge collection remains in storage), but it's a worthwhile and enjoyable museum that covers Peruvian civilization from prehistoric times to the colonial and republican periods. There are ceramics, carved stone figures and obelisks, metalwork and jewelry, and lovely textiles. On view are early ceramics from 2800 B.C. in the central Andes, the great granite Tello Obelisk from the Chavín period, burial tombs, and mummies in the fetal position wrapped in burial blankets. There's also a selection of erotic ceramics from the Moche culture, but it's not nearly as extensive as that of the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera. Individual rooms are dedicated to the Nasca, Paracas, Moche, and Chimú cultures. Toward the end of the exhibit, which wanders around the central courtyard of the handsome 19th-century Quinta de los Libertadores mansion (once lived in by South American independence heroes San Martín and Bolívar), is a large-scale model of Machu Picchu with buttons that allows visitors to identify key sectors of the complex. Basic descriptions throughout the museum are mostly in Spanish, although some are also in English. Allow about an hour for your visit. From the museum, you can follow a walking path along a painted blue line to the Rafael Larco Herrera Museum. It's about a mile away, or 20 minutes straight into traffic on Antonio de Sucre.

• © Frommer's 2012

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010