Museo de Arte Precolombino (MAP)

The Museo de Arte Precolombino, known as MAP, presents ancient Peruvian objects as works of art rather than simply as archaeological finds. Its pieces come from the collection of the Museo Larco in Lima, which owns the museum, and the displays trace roughly 3,000 years of Andean history, from the first communities with their own identity to the expansion of the Inca Empire. It is a good place to visit early in a trip, before the Sacred Valley or Machu Picchu, because it shows how many cultures came before the Inca.

The museum occupies a colonial mansion on the Plaza de las Nazarenas, a quiet square a short walk uphill from the Plaza de Armas. The site was an Inca ceremonial building before it was acquired in 1580 by Alonso Díaz, who built over it in colonial style, and it later became the home of the Hernández de Cabrera family. After falling into ruin it was restored with the support of Fundación BBVA and reopened as a museum in June 2003.

Around 450 pieces are on permanent display across ten rooms. Some are arranged by material, each with its own symbolic meaning: wood, the element of the ancestors; shells, used to preserve and reproduce myths; silver, the feminine element of nature; and gold, the link between different worlds. Others are arranged by region and period, covering the Nasca and Paracas cultures of the south, the Mochica of the north, the Huari of the centre, the Chancay and Chimú states that came before the Inca, and finally the Inca themselves.

MAP is open every day from 08:00 to 22:00, including public holidays, which makes it one of the few museums in Cusco you can see in the evening after a day out of town. With around 450 pieces it is a manageable size, so it suits a short visit between other sights.

The Plaza de las Nazarenas is also home to some of the city's grandest hotels, and the lanes of San Blas begin just beyond it. The Cathedral, the Twelve-Angled Stone and the Plaza de Armas are all within a few minutes' walk.