House of the Congress of Angostura
The colonial hall where Bolívar opened the Congress of Angostura in 1819, now a museum and archive.
The long single-storey house on the west side the Plaza Bolívar was built between 1766 and 1777 on the orders of the provincial governor Manuel Centurión Guerrero de Torres, who intended it as a Colegio de Latinidad y Letras for the town then called Angostura. Its plain plastered front, deep arcaded corridor and tiled roof are characteristic of Guayana's colonial civil architecture. The building has served as a school, a barracks and the seat of provincial government at different points in its history.
Its place in Venezuelan history rests on 15 February 1819, when Simón Bolívar opened the Congress of Angostura here and delivered the address that set out his constitutional thinking and led to the creation of Gran Colombia. The house is now a museum with period furniture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including two grand pianos and a Baccarat crystal chandelier brought from France in 1840, and it holds the Historical Archive of Guayana and a reference library. It forms part of the protected historic quarter of Ciudad Bolívar.
Highlights
- Hall where Bolívar opened the Congress of Angostura on 15 February 1819
- Colonial building of 1766-1777 by governor Manuel Centurión
- Baccarat crystal chandelier brought from France in 1840
- Home of the Historical Archive of Guayana and a reference library
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