Museo Larco

An 18th-century viceroy’s mansion houses this museum, which has one of the largest, best-presented displays of ceramics in Lima. Founded by Rafael Larco Hoyle in 1926, a dedicated collector and cataloguer of all things pre-Columbian, the collection is said to include, among other things, more than 50,000 pots (with thousands of extras housed in glass storerooms, which visitors can also see). The museum showcases ceramic works from the Cupisnique, Chimú, Chancay, Nazca and Inca cultures, but the highlight is the sublime Moche portrait vessels, presented in simple, dramatically lit cases. Equally astonishing: a Wari weaving in one of the rear galleries that contains 398 threads to the linear inch – a record. What lures many visitors here, however, is a separately housed collection of pre-Columbian erotic pots that illustrate, with comical explicitness, all manner of sexual activity. Not to be missed is the vitrine that depicts sexually transmitted diseases.