MAPI Museum

Here we are! Welcome to the Museum of Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Art, or better known to all of us Montevideans as the MAPI. If you look at the façade for a moment before crossing the door, you will see that the building itself already tells us the first story. A little history This imposing eclectic-style building was commissioned to be built at the end of the 19th century, between 1883 and 1888, by Dr. Emilio Reus. Your original idea? Create a monumental hydrotherapeutic medical center. Although it never functioned as such, over the decades it had very diverse lives: it housed the Ministry of Public Works and later the Ministry of National Defense. After being closed for a long time, its restoration began in the early 2000s and in 2004 it officially opened its doors as a museum, the result of an agreement between the Municipality of Montevideo and the collector Matteo Goretti. Due to its enormous heritage and urban value, it was declared a National Historical Monument. Its present Today, MAPI is a living and extremely dynamic cultural center in the heart of the Old City. Its collection houses more than 7,000 cultural assets that encompass the archaeological and ethnographic wealth of the native peoples of all of America. Permanent and temporary exhibitions coexist here, ranging from pre-Columbian artifacts to expressions of contemporary indigenous communities...

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