Chile (Central Region - Santiago de Chile)
Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino
A stone’s throw from the southwest corner of the Plaza de Armas, on the corner of Compañía and Bandera, stands the old royal customs house which now houses the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (Tues-Sat 10am-6pm & Sun 10am-2pm; CH$1500, Sun free). Unquestionably Santiago’s best museum, it brings together over two thousand pieces representing some eighty pre-Columbian peoples of Latin America. 

The collection spans a period of about five thousand years and covers regions from present-day Mexico down to southern Chile, brilliantly illustrating the artistic wealth and diversity of the continent’s many pre-Columbian cultures. Good layout and lighting set off the delicate beauty of the exhibits, and the whole thing is a very manageable size. The permanent collection is displayed in four rooms arranged around a central courtyard, each one dedicated to a different cultural area.
Area Andina
Covering the central Andean region (today’s Peru and western Bolivia), this room is distinguished by its superb textiles, retrieved from ancient graves and immaculately preserved, thanks to the darkness of the tombs and the dryness of the Andean desert. One of the most beautiful examples is the fragment of embroidered cloth produced by the Paracas culture between 300 and 100BC, depicting a human form that appears to be flying. Further along is the larger tapestry woven by the Nazca-Huari culture between 600 and 1000AD, densely illustrated with geometrically arranged icons in stunning, vividly preserved colours. The oldest in the museum is the Chavín textile, an incredible 3000 years old and still, astonishingly, intact. In addition to these textiles, the room contains some lovely fertility symbols and ceramic carvings depicting jaguars, serpents, llamas and eagles.

Area Intermedia
This area includes what is now Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, where the continent’s oldest pottery was produced, as well as some exquisite goldwork. Pottery made its first appearance in the Americas around 3000BC on the coast of Ecuador, where it was created by the agricultural and fishing communities of the Valdivia culture. Among the museum’s best examples of Valdivia pottery is the gorgeous little female figurine with a big, round belly and childlike face, thought to have been used for fertility rites carried out at harvest time. 

Other female representations include the Tumaco-La Tolita carving of a woman with her head thrown back, laughing, and the Bahía-Jama carving of a mother suckling her child at her breast - both images date from 500BC to 500AD, and both are touchingly naturalistic. Note also the wonderful cocoa leaf-chewing figures known as coqueros, carved with a tell-tale lump in their mouth by the Capulí culture (500BC-500AD). As well as pottery, this sala contains some beautiful gold objects, such as the miniature, finely-worked carvings produced by the Vegaguas and Diquis cultures (700-1550AD) featuring images of frightening monsters and open-jawed, long-fanged felines.

Area Mesoamérica
Walking through the large double doors off the hall you’ll find yourself in the Area Mesoamérica corresponding to present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Nicaragua. Right in front of you is one of the most startling pieces in the museum: a statue of Xipe-Totec, the god of Spring, represented as a man covered in the skin of a monkey, exposing both male and female genitalia. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the cult of Xipe-Totec had spread throughout most of Mesoamerica, and was celebrated in a bizarre ritual in which a young man would cover himself with the skin of a sacrificial victim, and wear it until it rotted off, revealing his young, fresh skin and symbolizing the growth of new vegetation from the earth. Another eye-catching object, further up the room on the left, is the elaborately ornamented incense burner (300-600AD), used by the Teotihuacán culture (300-600AD) to pray for rain and good harvests. The face carved in the middle represents a rain god, and when the incense was burning, the smoke would escape from his eyes.

Area Surandina
The final room is the Area Surandina, corresponding to modern Chile and northwest Argentina. Among the most striking pieces on display are the huge ceramic urns of the Aguada culture (600-900 AD), painted with bold geometric designs incorporating fantastic, often feline, images. Look out too for the wooden and stone snuff trays, carved by the San Pedro people of northern Chile between 300 and 1000AD, and used with small tubes to inhale hallucinogenic substances. The curious thing on the wall that looks like a grass skirt is a relic from the Incas, who made it all the way down to central Chile during their expansion in the fifteenth century. Known as a Quipú, it consists of many strands of wool attached to a single cord, and was used to keep various records - such as of taxes collected - by means of a complex system of knots tied in the strands.