The Museo Folklórico is the best museum in the city and one of the better regional folk museums in the northwest of Argentina. It occupies a colonial house a short walk from the main plaza and contains a well-displayed collection of religious art, pre-Columbian ceramics, weavings, and crafts from across La Rioja province. The building itself — a low, whitewashed structure arranged around an internal courtyard — is worth seeing.
The collection covers the crafts and religious practices of the puna and valley communities, with particular attention to the syncretic traditions that blended Spanish Catholicism with indigenous Andean belief. The Tinkunaco ceremony, a local tradition in which images of the infant Jesus and St Francis of Assisi are brought together in a ritual reconciliation each year, is well documented here.
Entry is inexpensive and the museum is small enough to see properly in under an hour. The staff are generally happy to explain the collection in more detail. It is typically closed during the midday heat and reopens in the afternoon.