Museo de Arte Precolombino Larco

This guide to the Museo de Arte Precolombino Larco in Cusco traces the collection back to the 1920s, when tomb robbers called huaqueros were tearing open Peru's ancient burial sites every night and scattering what they found. It follows Rafael Larco Hoyle, heir to the Chiclin sugar estate, buying up thousands of looted pieces from dealers to keep them together, until a house on his land could no longer hold what he had rescued. Along the way it walks through this building's own past as an Inca noble school, a convent, and a private mansion, before reaching the ten rooms of ceramics, silver, and gold you are standing in now.