MUNA - National Museum of Anthropology

The Museo Nacional de Antropología David J. Guzmán (MUNA) in the Colonia San Benito neighbourhood west of the centre is the best museum in El Salvador. The collection covers pre-Columbian cultures of the region — including the Pipil, Lenca, Maya, and earlier civilizations — with good displays of ceramics, jade, obsidian tools, and funerary objects. There is also a section on the colonial period and early independence.

The museum is modern and well-organised. Allow two hours. Admission is modest. Open Tuesday through Sunday. The neighbourhood around it (Colonia San Benito) is one of the more pleasant parts of the city for walking and has good restaurants nearby.

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Among the museum's most striking objects is the Cuzcatlán Monument — a large pre-Columbian stone stela that was found reused as a building block in colonial construction, its carvings face-down so that the Spanish colonists who used it did not realise what they were standing on. Its survival was entirely accidental.

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