Regional Museum, Oaxaca
Next to the Santo Domingo Church is the the Centro Cultural Santo Domingo (Cultural Center of Santo Domingo), the most impressive museum in Oaxaca. It is housed in a former Dominican convent, one of the greatest of colonial Mexico.
The government has spent millions to renovate the former convent, and it shows. The stairs, the arches, and the cupolas feature lovely details in stone or in the remnants of colonial-era murals.
The Regional Museum concentrates on pre-Columbian artifacts from the ancient cities of Oaxaca state. The highlights of the collection are the artifacts from Monte Albán's Tomb 7, discovered in 1932.
The tomb contained 12 to 14 corpses and some 500 pieces of jewelry and art made of almost 8 pounds of gold and turquoise, conch shell, amber, and obsidian. The gold objects are regarded as the finest of their kind in the Americas.
The Tomb 7 treasures are part of a larger collection of artifacts from Monte Albán, which make an excellent introduction before going up to the ruins. In the many ceramics and carvings you can see definite Olmec and Teotihuacán influences, yet they display a style distinctly different from either culture.
Other rooms are dedicated to the present-day ethnographic make-up of Oaxaca and a brief history of the efforts of the Dominican order in the region.
Quick Facts
| Location: | Gurrión at Alcalá, Oaxaca, Mexico |
| Phone: | 951/516-2991 |
| Hours: | Tues-Sun 10am-7:45pm |
| Cost: | $4.25 |
| Garden: | Admission to the garden is free but by guided tour only (at 1 and 6pm). Sign up at the front desk of the museum the same day of the tour. There are two tours a week in English; ask for info at the front desk. |
Sources: Eyewitness Travel Guide to Mexico and Frommer's Mexico 2005.
