Larco Museum

Larco Museum, museum in Lima, Peru, displaying art and artifacts of ancient Peruvian history.

Founded in 1926 by Rafael Larco Hoyle, the Larco Museum contains one of Peru’s finest historical collections devoted to the country’s pre-Columbian peoples. It is housed in an 18th-century colonial mansion built on the ruins of a 7th-century pyramid. Organized chronologically, its artifacts represent a variety of ancient indigenous cultures, spanning several millennia. The permanent exhibition contains thousands of priceless objects, including gold and jewelry, ceramic statuary and sculptures, metals, textiles, and a display of erotic representations of the ancient world. The large Cultures Hall provides a comprehensive overview of Peruvian art dating from before 7000 bce to the Spanish conquest. The hall consists of four sections, representing the four cultural regions of Peru: the north coast, the centre, the south, and the highlands.

The Larco was one of the first museums to permit its visitors access to its storage facility, which houses an additional 45,000 artifacts. Although they lack curatorial annotation, the objects in the storeroom are arranged by theme and chronology. In 2001 the Larco began cataloging each piece online, and since 2007 the entire collection has been available to search on the museum’s website.