Peru Guide
Cusco
The Museo Inka
Opening time: Mon– Fri 8am–6pm, Sat and holidays 9am–4pm
Price: $4
Address: North of the Cathedral, slightly uphill beside the Balcon de Cusco
The Museo Inka is housed in one of the city's most beautiful colonial mansions: El Palacio del Almirante (The Admiral's Palace). The museum, which boasts 10,000 catalogued specimens, features excellent exhibits of mummies, trepanned skulls, Inca textiles, a set of forty green turquoise figurines from the Huari settlement of Pikillacta and a range of Inca wooden quero vases (a specific style of slightly tapering drinking vessels). There are also displays of ceramics, early silver metalwork and a few gold figurines, but it's the spacious, organized layout and the imaginative, well-interpreted presentation that make this one of the best museums in Cusco for understanding the development of civilization in the Andes. Constructed on Inca foundations – this time the Waypar stronghold, where the Spanish were besieged by Manco's forces in 1536 – the building itself is noteworthy for its simple but well-executed Plateresque facade, surmounted by two imposing Spanish coats of arms plus the mullioned external balcony.