Museo Nacional de Colombia
Colombia's national museum, founded in 1823 and housed in a converted nineteenth-century panopticon prison.
Established by decree in 1823, soon after independence, the Museo Nacional is the oldest museum in Colombia and among the oldest in the Americas. It began as a natural history cabinet and school of mining, and over two centuries broadened into four collections covering art, history, archaeology and ethnography, together holding roughly twenty thousand objects. Permanent galleries trace the peopling of the territory, the colonial period, the wars of independence and the formation of the republic.
Since 1948 the museum has occupied the building known as El Panóptico, begun in 1874 to a design by the Danish architect Thomas Reed as a model prison. Its cruciform plan of stone-vaulted wings radiating from a central rotunda, originally built so that guards could watch several corridors at once, now serves as exhibition space; the thick sandstone walls and barrel vaults are left exposed. The former cells house displays, and the building is a declared national monument on Carrera 7 north of the city centre.
Highlights
- Founded in 1823, the oldest museum in Colombia
- Set in El Panóptico, a former model prison by Thomas Reed
- Four collections: art, history, archaeology and ethnography
- Permanent galleries on independence and the early republic
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