Gold Museum
Pre-Columbian gold votive raft depicting a chief's sacred lake offering ritual behind the El Dorado legend.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Bogotá's Gold Museum starts with a farmer near Pasca who, digging in a cave in 1969, unearthed a tiny gold raft carrying eleven figures around a chief. It traces what that raft depicts: a Muisca coronation rite on Lake Guatavita, where a new chief was coated in gold dust and offerings were thrown into the water at sunrise. From there it follows how Spanish conquistadors, chasing rumors of the ceremony, built the legend of El Dorado and searched for a golden city that never existed.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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