Museo Larco: Peru's Greatest Pre-Columbian Collection
The Museo Larco in the Pueblo Libre district of Lima houses the largest private collection of pre-Columbian art in the world — 45,000 objects spanning 5,000 years of Andean civilisation, including the famous erotic pottery collection and the gold and silver vault
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45,000 Pre-Columbian Objects
Museo Larco's collection – assembled by Rafael Larco Hoyle beginning in the 1920s – spans 5,000 years of Andean civilization from the Chavín culture (900 BC) to the Incas; the collection includes Mochica portrait vessels, Nasca textiles, Chimu gold, and Inca ceremonial objects; the museum is the best introduction to Peru's pre-Columbian civilizations
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Mochica Portrait Vessel
The Mochica (Moche) culture of the northern Peruvian coast produced the most realistic portrait pottery of the ancient world - individual faces, expressions and identities captured in fired clay 1,500 years ago; The Larco Museum's Mochica collection is the finest in the world; the portrait vessels were used as funerary objects
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Gold and Silver Vault
Larco's Sala del Tesoro (treasure room) - an entrance vault - houses gold and silver objects from the Chimu, Lambayeque and Inca cultures; the feathered gold headdresses, the silver goblets (keros), and the turquoise and shell jewelry represent the finest metalwork in ancient America
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Erotic ceramics collection
Larco's sala erótica – a separate room housing several hundred explicitly erotic pre-Columbian ceramics – is one of Lima's most visited (and discussed) museum attractions; the erotic pottery of the Mochica culture was not pornographic but religious, representing fertility, the cycle of life and death, and supernatural sexuality
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Miraflores Garden Environment
Museo Larco occupies a converted 18th-century mansion in Pueblo Libre, surrounded by beautiful gardens; the museum's cafe (Café del Museo) in the garden, which serves excellent Peruvian food, has made the museum a destination as much for lunch as for archeology
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Available storage
Museo Larco pioneered "open storage" - the museum's storerooms are open to visitors, giving access to 45,000 objects rather than the small selection usually on display; the long gallery of open metal shelves containing thousands of ceramics, textiles and metal objects is one of the most impressive collections anywhere