Pumapungo Museum & Archaeological Park

The Pumapungo Museum and Archaeological Park, an institution of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador.

The entity was inaugurated on November 4, 1980, as Museum and Library of the Central Bank of Ecuador, Cuenca branch. In July 1984, the Central Bank acquired from the Salesian community the historical heritage of Italian father Carlos Crespi, composed of 6,585 archaeological, colonial art and ethnographic assets. Other collections that make up the Museum's nuclear heritage fund belonged to the humanists Victor Manuel Albornoz and Luis Moscoso Vega. Businessman Guillermo Vázquez Astudillo made a generous donation of prehistoric ceramics.

 

In the 1980s, the "Pumapungo Project" of archaeological prospecting was carried out to recover the vestiges of the ancient Inca city of Tomebamba and the Huayna Cápac Palace. In a part of this 7-hectare property, the Central Bank built its regional headquarters. In the mid-90s, the Museum began to operate in the new building, which is located south of the Historical Center of Cuenca (a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

 

Since 2001, the Inka Gardens Ethnobotanical Park, with its Bird Rescue Center, has also been operating here. And you can also visit the Site Museum of the city of Tomebamba, which is a reconstruction of the vestiges of the old "tambo" (resting place for travelers) Inca. The Inca city of Tomebamna was the second administrative center of the ancient Andean empire.

 

Another of the main attractions of the museum is the National Hall of Ethnography, an exhibition about the cultures of Ecuador, its traditions and customs. In the room "Pumapunku: worlds of memory", the archaeological findings of Pumapungo are exhibited. The museum has an art room. Three temporary exhibition rooms. The Victor M. Albornoz Library has a collection of 80,000 items: books, historical archive, historical photographic archive and map library. There is a collection of audiovisuals. Children's reading space. Information and lobby. Craft shop. Ans a small room for cultural events.

 

Since 2010 the Museum is attached to the Ministry of Culture and Heritage of Ecuador. Its reserves, hidden from the eyes of the public, treasure hundreds of thousands of cultural objects of Ecuadorian heritage: religious and republican art, pictorial art, documentary, audiovisual, ethnography, archaeology. Also, inside the building of the Pumapungo Museum, the Central Bank of Ecuador manages a small Numismatics Museum. The complex also has the Pumapungo Theater, which has a capacity for 700 people and is equipped with modern technology to hold a variety of events.