Night of the Museums in Sucre

I was lucky enough to be in Sucre on the Night of the Museums.  This seemed to follow the format of the Nuit Blanche in Paris, Lange Naacht der Museen in Berlin or Museums at Night in the UK where basically museums in a particular city (or country) are open all night with many special events for visitors.  You can find out more about the history of the Long Night of Museums here.

So the museums in Sucre were supposed to be free and open from 6pm until 1am or 6am with various special events.  This being South America, the opening times and event times were a bit haphazard but a group of us from the hostel went to a few places anyway, and enjoyed a break from the crowds (and built up our queuing strength) by going to eat pizza half way through.

Sucre has some great museums and I´d already visited most of the ones I wanted to visit so the Night of the Museums was a chance to visit some of the ones I might not have visited seeing as they were all free for the night.

We´d obviously underestimated how popular the Night of the Museums would be!  Being a museum nerd, I always assume that most people are not interested in visiting museums but I guess the lure of free entry is a big incentive.  All of the museums had massive queues outside to get in and the plaza was full of people milling about.  There was a great atmosphere in town.

Mini Eiffel Tower in Sucre

First stop was the Casa de la Libertad where the declaration of independence of Bolivia was signed on 6th August 1825.  The queue was too big though so we decided to come back later and headed for the park with its famous mini Eiffel Tower.  There was supposed to be a light and music show but I guess we were too early.  It´s amazing to realise that someone in Sucre commissioned this mini Eiffel Tower in 1906 from Gustaf Eiffel himself.  Even the materials were sent from Europe.  I guess there was money because at that time Potosi (near to Sucre) was bigger and richer than Paris thanks to the amount of silver being mined from the Cerro Rico (the rich hill). 

Interior of the Palace of Justice (probably the fanciest building I visited in Bolivia)

 The tower is kind of cute, and you can climb up it, so we gave it a quick glance before heading through the park to the Palace of Supreme Justice.  I got the impression that this place might not usually be open to the public as we had to go through a metal detector and join a guided tour.  In each room a local history student (or two) told us about the room and let us ask questions.  They gave us so much info I forgot most of it (despite translating for the non-spanish speakers).  We saw the room where the supreme court meets, the actual court room, another room for social events (called the room of mirrors because it was covered with mirrors and decorated in an 18th century french style) and the national judicial library.  It was all quite grand and impressive.

We saw there was still a long queue for the Casa de la Libertad so headed over to the military museum.  This was packed with people moving round in a conveyor belt style pas the exhibits (a form of crowd control imposed in all of the museums this night) we filed disinterestedly past various guns, military equipment and uniforms, 3D map models and model ships (yes, Bolivia still has a navy even though it doesn´t have any sea of its own, no thanks to Chile).  We stopped to read some news articles about Che Guevara that were sort of falling off the wall (display standards weren´t very high here) before heading off to get some pizza.

The big wooden Simon Bolivar head at Casa de la Libertad

Finally we joined the queue for Cas de la Libertad.  We wanted to stop and read the short texts about the displays as this is one of the most important museums in Sucre.  Unfortunately, the security staff (actual police or military guard) had obviously been briefed to keep everyone moving in a line past the exhibits and we were told to get a move on several times.  Highlight was the large carved head of Simon Bolivar that everyone stopped to get their photo taken with.

People filing past Simon Bolivar´s head

Local Kjarkas band

In the courtyard of the Casa de la Libertad was a dancing display and live music.  We managed to catch a young group of kids playing tradition Bolivian music.  I thought this type of music was called Kjarkas but it seems that this is the name of the most famous traditional band in Bolivia rather than the type of music.  The kids played great and their lead guitarist and singer was a real showman, and only 10 years old!  We stayed for their whole set and afterwards asked if they had a CD for sale.  Unfortunately, they were due to record their first (live) CD in two weeks, after we had all left Sucre.  I managed to film one of their songs though, which is a nice memory.

 

As our final stop we felt obliged to visit the cathedral, even though it had the longest queue all night.  We queued up and eventually got entry to the museum of the cathedral attached to the cathedral.  I´d already decided that I´d had my fill of religious art so walked round quite quickly, only stopping to admire some fine silverwork and gems of some of the chalices on display.

The other museums I can recommend in Sucre are:

– MUSEF (Ethnographic Museum).  I also went to this museum in La Paz, where they also had the (same) impressive display of festival and ritual masks from all over Bolivia.

– ASUR (Textile Museum, though it´s now actually only a shop selling very high quality textiles on a fair trade basis).