Pumapungo Museum and Archaeological Park
Ethnographic museum above the excavated Inca terraces of Tomebamba on the edge of Cuenca.
The museum was founded in 1979 by the Banco Central del Ecuador and is now run by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. Its best-known section is the national ethnographic gallery, which sets out clothing, masks, instruments and ritual objects from Ecuador's coastal, Andean and Amazonian regions, including Shuar shrunken heads and a reconstructed Afro-Ecuadorian house from Esmeraldas. Other rooms hold pre-Columbian ceramics, a display of ancient gold and silver, and material on the ikat weaving of nearby Gualaceo.
Behind the building the ground drops away to the archaeological park, laid out over the remains of Pumapungo, the religious and administrative quarter of the Inca city of Tomebamba founded in the late fifteenth century. Stone foundations of the Kurikancha, storehouses and residential compounds survive among reconstructed agricultural terraces, water channels and a lake; the German archaeologist Max Uhle carried out the first systematic excavations here in the early twentieth century. A rescue centre in the grounds keeps native birds recovered from illegal trade.
Highlights
- National ethnographic gallery covering coast, highlands and Amazon
- Excavated Inca foundations of Tomebamba's Pumapungo quarter
- Reconstructed terraces, water channels and Andean garden
- Rescue centre for native birds taken from illegal trade
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