Museo Nacional de Colombia

The Museo Nacional de Colombia at Carrera 7 No. 28-66 in Bogotá, Colombia, is the country's oldest museum, established in 1823, and is housed in the former Panóptico prison, a cruciform building designed by Thomas Reed and completed in 1874. After the prison closed in 1946 the building was adapted for the museum, which opened there in 1948. The permanent exhibition of about 2,500 objects is drawn from a collection of more than 20,000 and is arranged in roughly chronological galleries. It begins with archaeology and the pre-Hispanic peoples, moves through the conquest and the colonial period with religious art, portraits and everyday objects, then follows the independence wars, the republic and the social change of the 20th century. Independence rooms display arms, uniforms and personal belongings of Simón Bolívar and other leaders. Fine-arts galleries include works by Fernando Botero, Débora Arango, Alejandro Obregón and Beatriz González, and colonial painting of the Santa Fe school. The prison's cells and corridors remain visible, so the galleries preserve the original architecture, and a gallery interprets the building's penal history. Curators combine chronological display with thematic rooms and regularly rotate temporary exhibitions on ethnography, art and memory. The museum has a library, an auditorium, a garden and a cafe, and educational programmes for schools. Conservation work in recent decades has improved climate control, lighting and accessibility. Text panels are mainly in Spanish, with some English support and audio materials. The building is large, and a thorough visit takes several hours, so many visitors focus on a few floors. It lies in the Santa Fe district north of the historic centre, close to the Parque de la Independencia and the bullring, and can be reached by TransMilenio or taxi.