Larco Museum, Pre-Columbian art museum in Pueblo Libre, Lima, Peru.
The Larco Museum is an archaeological museum in Pueblo Libre housed in an 18th-century mansion that displays over 45,000 objects from Peruvian civilizations. The collection includes ceramics, textiles, jewelry, and metalwork spanning roughly 5,000 years, mostly from the northern and central coast of Peru.
Rafael Larco Hoyle founded the collection in 1926 after his father gifted him a ceremonial ceramic piece, sparking his interest in pre-Columbian art. The museum later moved to its current mansion, which sits atop a 7th-century pre-Columbian pyramid.
The name honors Rafael Larco Hoyle, who devoted his life to studying Moche ceramics and developed a scientific cataloging method still used today. Visitors encounter the Erotic Gallery, which houses hundreds of ceramic pieces depicting sexual acts and shows how openly Moche culture approached the human body.
The museum sits on Avenida Simón Bolívar 1515 and opens daily from 9:30 AM to 10:00 PM, with all areas accessible for wheelchair users. The gardens surrounding the building offer seating and a quiet place to rest between exhibitions.
The storage area remains open to visitors and displays 30,000 classified ceramic pieces on industrial shelves, sorted by form and function. This arrangement lets guests directly compare the variety of pre-Columbian ceramic production and spot patterns in shape and decoration.
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