True historical, cultural and ancestral expressions are exhibited in the Tairona Gold Museum, Customs House. There are more than 560 objects, both archaeological from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and ethnographic from the department of Magdalena.
One of the most surprising is undoubtedly the Customs House itself, an exceptional eighteenth-century construction that has witnessed the long history of the city and has been carefully restored by the Bank of the Republic.
Inaugurated on December 17, 1980, it would be the first regional museum of the Banco de la República in the country. According to Alejandra Garcés, coordinator of the Museum, the site began to operate in the Customs House, the site where Simón Bolívar stayed and, after his death, where he was held in a burning chamber. The Customs House, declared a national monument in 1970, underwent a comprehensive restoration process to house the new Tairona Gold Museum.
“The Customs House is a legendary place in Santa Marta that dates from the beginning of the 18th century and precisely that particularity leads us to show these objects in the museum and from that to tell a little more about the history of the city through the objects dedicated to the cultural diversity of the department of Magdalena. We have art and culture from four indigenous communities, also from others from the plains and the Caribbean and all its towns in the department,” Garcés explained to THE NEW CENTURY.
To learn a little more about the subject, it is enough to take a tour of the objects belonging to the societies that inhabited the Sierra Nevada during the Nahuange (200 to 900 AD) and Tairona (900 to 1600 AD) periods, and get to know different current communities. : koguis, wiwas, wintukuas and kankuamos, as well as the ettes of the Ariguaní savannahs (ancestral inhabitants of the region).
“The difference of this museum with the others that are in the region is that it has an immense cultural richness, very special archaeological objects from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Customs House, in both places there are historical and patrimonial components,” he said. Garces.
theme rooms
The museum consists of four thematic rooms that invite you to learn, reflect and discuss the life and stories of those who have lived in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and in the department of Magdalena in the last 2000 years.
Additionally, there is the Tairona Gold Museum store, where you will find jewelry, certified replicas of Tairona goldsmithing, crafts from different regions of the country. Also the catalog in English or Spanish of this museum and books published by the cultural area of the Bank of the Republic.
On floor 1, the Pre-Hispanic Societies room presents the societies that inhabited the Sierra Nevada during the Nahuange (200 to 900 AD) and Tairona (900 to 1600 AD) periods. Their pottery and goldsmithing, their ways of life and burial, their ceramics and rituals have been revealed by archaeological investigations.
On the 2nd floor, the exhibition “The people of Magdalena” takes a tour of the current department of Magdalena, marveling at its cultural diversity.
On that same floor is “Stories from the Customs House”, archaeological excavations and research in historical archives that reveal the biography of this house and aspects of the life of those who have occupied it for 300 years. It tells about the founding of the city, about battles and pirates, “castes” and social customs, and about the recent times of the port, the railway, bananas, soccer and tourism.
The “Bolívar was here” room is a space dedicated to the liberator of six nations, Simón Bolívar, who died in 1830 in Santa Marta and was held a wake on the second floor of this house.. A chronology traces his triumphs and defeats, his loves and disagreements, while multiple voices collect the validity of his memory.
literary legacy
There is also the Gabriel García Márquez Library, in recognition of the literary legacy of the Nobel Prize winner García Márquez, a symbol of the nation and of Magdalena. It was inaugurated on October 17, 2001, with a bibliographic collection of more than 11,000 volumes which, by 2013, had reached 30,000.
It has a general room made up of open shelves, where users have free access to the bibliographic collection.. It also has a reading room for newspapers and magazines where users can find out about and consult local, national and international serials. Stories of the old Magdalena Grande, which today includes the departments of Magdalena, Cesar and La Guajira, are an important part of his life and work. His stories about the Colombian Guajira, the Sierra Nevada, the banana zone, the municipality of Ciénaga and the Ciénaga Grande, the rivers that flow into it and the so-called Province of Padilla, were the scenes of his Macondian universe.
It should be noted that the Tairona Gold Museum is wheelchair accessible using the main entrance. It has an elevator that gives access to the second floor of the permanent exhibition and an accessible bathroom. For deaf people and their companions, free activities are offered in Colombian sign language.
Additionally, the cultural programming, that is, the conferences, workshops and conversations organized by the Tairona Gold Museum began to be broadcast on Facebook Live Banrepcultural Santa Marta, delivering sessions about regional anthropology and archeology of northern Colombia, especially those investigations dedicated to the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and Magdalena.