Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
up by military policemen with more modern equipment. As the day-to-day office of the pres-
ident, the palace isn't open to the public, but the guards may let you have a look at the central
courtyard when the president is not in residence. Completed in 1852, the palace is generally
known as the
Palacio Quemado
- the “Burnt Palace” - after it was badly damaged by fire in
1875 during one of the more violent of Bolivia's many revolutionary episodes. In front of the
Catedral stands a bust of former president Gualberto Villaroel, himself thrown from a palace
window by a mob and hanged from a lamppost as recently as 1946.
Palacio Legislativo
East side of Plaza Murillo
The
Palacio Legislativo
is the seat of the Bolivian parliament, built in a similar Neoclassical
style to the Catedral in the early twentieth century on the site previously occupied by the
Jesuit headquarters until their expulsion from the Spanish Empire in 1767. Even this hasn't
been immune to the worst effects of Bolivia's tumultuous political climate, with a miner in-
famously blowing himself up inside the building in 2004, in protest at the lack of retirement
provision.
Museo Nacional de Arte
Southwest corner of Plaza Murillo • Mon-Fri 9.30am-12.30pm & 3-7pm, Sat 10am-5.30pm, Sun
10am-1.30pm • Bs10 •
mna.org.bo
The Palacio de Los Condes de Arana is one of La Paz's finest surviving colonial palaces;
it would be difficult to think of a more magnificent setting for Bolivia's premier art gallery,
the
Museo Nacional de Arte
, well worth visiting for its comprehensive collection of works
by major Bolivian painters. Completed in 1775, when La Paz was at the peak of its colonial
prosperity, the palace is a pre-eminent example of Baroque architecture, with a grand portico
opening onto a central patio overlooked by three floors of arched walkways, all elaborately
carved from pink granite in a Rococo style with stylized shells, flowers and feathers.
Colonial art
The emphasis of the museum's art collection is firmly on colonial religious art. Among the
highlightsareseveralworksby
Melchor Pérez de Holguín
,thegreatmasterofAndeancolo-
nial painting, and a magnificent eighteenth-century picture by an anonymous La Paz artist of
an Archangel Arquebusero, an iconic image of an angel carrying a primitive firearm, which
neatly encapsulates the spiritual and military contradictions of the Spanish conquest. Per-
haps the most fascinating of the museum's colonial works, however, is the small, anonymous
canvas,
Virgin Mountain
(1720), donated by Madrid's Reina Sofía gallery, and based on a
design attributed to
Francisco Tito Yupanqui
. The piece, one of the finest extant examples
of mestizo-Baroque, depicts Potosí's Cerro Rico with the Virgin Mary inlaid ghost-like at its
summit, flanked by the Pillars of Hercules and looming over tiny, stick-like representations
of
Inca Huayna Capac
and Diego Huallpa. Dense in allegory and syncretism, it conflates the
