Casa Museo José Carlos Mariátegui, Literary museum in Lima, Peru.
Casa Museo José Carlos Mariátegui occupies a single-storey early-20th-century solar on Jr. Washington in the Cercado de Lima, in what were then the city's outskirts. It preserves documents, books, objects and part of the period furniture of the Peruvian thinker, who lived here with his wife and four children from 1 June 1925 until his death on 16 April 1930.
Mariátegui made this house his residence in 1925 and used it as his workspace until his death. The building gained protected status as a National Historic Monument in 1972.
Mariátegui was called the Amauta, a Quechua term for a learned teacher, and the museum keeps his library and newspaper clippings on the political ideology he developed. The house also hosts temporary exhibitions, book presentations and lectures, and its library is open for consultation. In 2007 a planned show by Piero Quijano was partly censored after an army commander objected to a drawing, prompting director Armando Williams to resign.
The museum is at Jr. Washington 1938–1946 in the Cercado de Lima, and entry is free after registering at the door. It opens Sunday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is closed on Saturdays. Guided tours and the library are available on site.
The house was saved from demolition in 1972, when Peru's National Institute of Culture declared it a Republican Historic Monument. It had already been rented out and subdivided, and full restoration only came under Alberto Fujimori, with architect Luis Graña designing the remodeling; it reopened on 17 June 1994, during the centenary of Mariátegui's birth.
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