Casa del Alabado Museum of Pre-Columbian Art
Pre-Columbian art museum in a 17th-century house in Quito's historic centre.
The Casa del Alabado occupies one of the oldest surviving dwellings in Quito's historic centre, a colonial house of the seventeenth century arranged around two patios on Calle Cuenca. The building was restored during the second wave of Old Town conservation work and opened as a museum on 11 April 2010. The conversion kept the adobe walls, timber galleries and stone paving of the original house while inserting darkened galleries and discreet lighting designed for displaying small archaeological objects.
The collection comprises more than 5,000 archaeological pieces from the territory of present-day Ecuador, of which around 500 are shown at any one time. Works in clay, stone, shell and metal come from the Valdivia, Machalilla, Chorrera, Jama-Coaque, Bahía, La Tolita, Manteño and other cultures, with the earliest dating to roughly 4500 BC. Rather than a chronological sequence, the displays are organised around Andean cosmology, shamanism and the relationship between the living and their ancestors.
Highlights
- Over 5,000 archaeological pieces, about 500 on permanent display
- Valdivia, Chorrera, Jama-Coaque and La Tolita ceramics
- Seventeenth-century colonial house with two patios
- Displays arranged by Andean cosmology rather than chronology
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