Casa Nacional de Moneda

Lonely Planet review

The Casa Nacional de Moneda is Potosí's star attraction and one of South America's finest museums. Potosí's first mint was constructed on the present site of the Casa de Justicia in 1572 under orders from the Viceroy of Toledo. This, its replacement, is a vast, elegant, and strikingly beautiful building that takes up a whole city block. It was built between 1753 and 1773 to control the minting of colonial coins.

Legend has it that when the king of Spain saw the bill for its construction, he exclaimed 'that building must be made of silver' (expletive presumably deleted). These coins, which bore the mint mark 'P,' were known as potosís . The building has walls that are more than a meter thick, and it has not only functioned as a mint but also done spells as a prison, a fortress and, during the Chaco War, as the headquarters of the Bolivian army. As visitors are ushered into a courtyard from the entrance, they're greeted by the sight of a stone fountain and a mask of Bacchus, hung there in 1865 by Frenchman Eugenio Martin Moulon for reasons known only to him. In fact, this aberration looks more like an escapee from a children's fun fair, but it has become a town icon (known as the mascarón ).

Apart from the beauty of the building itself, there's a host of historical treasures here. There's a fine selection of religious paintings from the Potosí school, culminating in La Virgen del Cerro, a very famous anonymous work from the 18th century. It depicts the Virgin Mary as a Pachamama-like figure, actually within the earth, in this case represented by the Cerro Rico. It's full of symbols relating to the union of traditional Andean religion with Catholicism.

Perhaps the highlight of the visit are the immense assemblies of mule-driven wooden cogs that served to beat the silver to the width required for the coining. These were replaced by steam-powered machines in the 19th century. The last coins were minted here in 1953.

The guided tour is long, and the temperatures inside the building are chilly, so rug up. Although there are English and French tours available on request, the quality of the Spanish one is much higher and the visit more comprehensive, so it's well worth doing even if your levels are fairly limited.