Guayaquil Municipal Museum
Ecuador's oldest museum, covering the city from pre-Hispanic cultures to the modern era.
The Museo Municipal traces its origins to 1863, when the Guayaquil politician Pedro Carbo Noboa set up an industrial museum, making it the oldest museum foundation in Ecuador. It was formally constituted in 1908 under its first director, the historian Camilo Destruge Illingworth, and acquired premises of its own in 1916. The present building in the city centre, shared with the municipal library, was rebuilt after the fires that repeatedly destroyed Guayaquil's timber architecture.
Permanent galleries follow the region's past from the Valdivia, Machalilla and Chorrera cultures through the colonial city, independence and the republic, ending with twentieth-century painting. Displays include pre-Hispanic ceramics and stonework, colonial firearms, early plans of the port, religious painting and sculpture, a numismatic room tracing exchange from barter to coinage, and a group of Shuar tsantsas. Temporary exhibition halls show modern and contemporary work by Ecuadorian artists.
Highlights
- Oldest museum foundation in Ecuador, begun in 1863
- Valdivia, Machalilla and Chorrera archaeology
- Colonial arms, maps and religious art of the port city
- Numismatic room and a collection of Shuar tsantsas
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