My goodness, my trip to Lima really seems to have taken a template from my three days in London! Like my second day in the UK capital, a large part of my second day in the Peruvian capital was spent at a world-renown museum, this time the Museo Larco. This museum boasts the world’s largest private pre-Columbian art collection, including erotic pottery, and one of the largest open storage displays.

It was a long Uber trip to the museum, just over 30 minutes. I did leave very late morning and was able to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic.

I had prepurchased my ticket online to save a few soles and skip the lineup to get in, but the museum was quiet on Wednesday morning. You enter the property and go up this ramp to get to the ticket desk.

This is the exterior courtyard of the property, and you can see the restaurant at the back.

The museum didn’t just give me a crash course on pre-Columbian art, but also Peruvian history. Again, I had to face the fact that my Eurocentric Canadian history failed me. How did I not know that Peru is one of the seven cradles of civilisation equal to that of China and Mesopotamia?!

Some history on the museum and its founder:

I’m just going to share items that caught my eye. Most of the pottery featured cats, snakes, and birds, the three sacred animals of ancient Peru.

There is very little of the Inca around Lima, to my surprise.

I had a moment of reflection at the part of the exhibit that focussed on ritual sacrifice. We’ve all seen the movies of the “savages” enacting these rituals in terrifying, sadistic fashion. But the reality is that these practices were well organised, deeply embedded in the local culture, and often a great honour to the person being sacrificed.

And here we get to an artifact that really shows how special is the Museo Larco and why it could be a considered a “destination” museum for archaeology and history buffs. I’m just so happy that it is being exhibited in its home country.

After visiting the primary exhibition, I headed back into the interior courtyard so I could visit the open storage.

Imagine dozens of cabinets like these. It was not easy to photograph in there because of the reflection of the glass, so this is all I have to share of this collection of more than 15,000 items, all carefully organised.

The final stop at Museo Larco is the fascinating exhibit of erotic art, although I have to wonder if that is the correct name for it. Was it meant to be arousing, or is that just a modern interpretation?

A few final shots of the outer courtyard.

I spent about three hours total at Museo Larco reading everything and watching an informational video. I’d say this incredible museum is a must-do in Lima.

Coming out of the museum, I didn’t have any cell service, a frequent issue in my three days there. I don’t know if the problem was with TelCel (I was on a roaming plan) or just service in general, but it was occasionally frustrating, especially here as I had no idea how I was going to get an Uber to take me to my next stop, centro histórico. Well, it’s weird how things happen sometimes, that something so unrelated as my getting a stupid late start that morning after sleeping 13 hours straight (!!!) combined with a lack of cell coverage made a much-needed chance encounter possible… But that’s for the next post. 😉