Oro (gold) is only half of what this fabulous museum is about. Housed in the impressively renovated Casa de la Aduana (Customs House), which features in the Gabriel García Márquez novel No One Writes to the Colonel, the displays lure you in with ceramics and jewelry from the Nahuange and Tayrona periods, backed by a comprehensive history of metalwork in the pre-Columbian Sierra Nevada.

　　Upstairs the history lesson continues in Spanish and English with the full story of Santa Marta's past, including a tribute to Simon Bolívar, who died here in 1830.