Museo Larco
Pre-Columbian art museum in an 18th-century mansion, famed for Moche ceramics and gold.
Museo Larco is a privately owned museum of pre-Columbian art in the Pueblo Libre district of Lima. It was founded on 28 July 1926 by the archaeologist Rafael Larco Hoyle at the Hacienda Chiclín in the Chicama Valley, near Trujillo, building on a collection of ceramics acquired by his father, Rafael Larco Herrera. In the mid-twentieth century Larco Hoyle moved the collection to Lima, where it was installed in its present home during the 1950s. The museum marked its centenary in 2026.
The museum occupies an eighteenth-century viceregal mansion that, according to its historical accounts, stands on a seventh-century pre-Columbian pyramid. When the house was adapted for the museum, it incorporated railings, doors, columns, beams and locks from the manor house of the Marquises of Herrera and Villa Hermosa in Trujillo. The whitewashed building is surrounded by terraced gardens planted with bougainvillea and other flowering plants, and a café occupies part of the grounds.
The collection numbers around 45,000 archaeological objects spanning several thousand years of Peruvian history, with particular strength in the cultures of the north coast, including Cupisnique, Mochica and Chimú. The permanent exhibition is arranged chronologically and by region, and a gallery of gold and silver displays ornaments worn by ancient rulers. The visible storage areas allow visitors to see the classified reserve collection, while a separate gallery presents the pre-Columbian erotic ceramics that Larco Hoyle studied in his 1966 book Checan.
Highlights
- Eighteenth-century viceregal mansion reported to stand on a seventh-century pyramid
- Around 45,000 pre-Columbian objects, strongest in Mochica and Chimú cultures
- Gallery of gold and silver ornaments worn by ancient Peruvian rulers
- Visible storage rooms displaying the classified reserve collection
- Erotic ceramics gallery and gardens draped in bougainvillea
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