Museum of the Cultures of Oaxaca (Santo Domingo)
Dominican convent housing Oaxaca's archaeology, including the Mixtec treasure of Tomb 7 at Monte Albán.
The museum occupies the former convent of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, built by the Dominican order between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and among the largest monastic complexes in Mexico. After the religious community was expelled, the buildings served as barracks for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Between 1994 and 1998 the whole convent was restored under the architect Juan Urquiaga, and the Centro Cultural Santo Domingo opened to the public on 24 July 1998 with the museum as its main occupant.
Fourteen halls run in sequence around the upper cloister and set out the history of the Oaxaca valleys from the earliest settlement to the twentieth century. The best-known display holds the gold, turquoise and carved bone found by Alfonso Caso in Tomb 7 at Monte Albán in 1932, one of the richest burial assemblages excavated in the Americas. Other rooms cover Zapotec and Mixtec sculpture, colonial religious art and local crafts, and windows look onto the adjoining ethnobotanical garden.
Highlights
- Mixtec gold and turquoise from Tomb 7 at Monte Albán, excavated in 1932
- Fourteen halls around the restored upper cloister of the convent
- Views over the ethnobotanical garden laid out in the former orchard
- Baroque interiors of the adjoining church of Santo Domingo
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