Museum of the Americas

The Museo de America in the Moncloa district of Madrid displays around 25000 objects from North and South America - from the Palaeolithic to the present - and holds the most important pre-Columbian collection outside the Americas. The museum was founded in 1941 under Franco, but the building itself is a light Neo-Renaissance complex by architects Luis Moya and Luis Feduchi from the 1940s, inaugurated in 1965. Highlights include the Codex Tro-Cortesianus, one of the few surviving Maya folding books, the gold Quimbaya treasure from Colombia, Tlingit shaman masks from Alaska and Peruvian feather garments. The permanent display is arranged thematically by tools, religion and society. Visitors find a critical look at the Spanish colonial past and at the cultural variety of the American continent.