Juana Azurduy de Padilla was born in Sucre in 1780, fought as a guerrilla leader in the wars of independence, and is now regarded as one of the great women of Latin American history. Her colonial childhood home, a single-storey whitewashed building on Calle San Alberto, has been converted into a small museum. Inside, period furniture, weapons, portraits and battle maps trace her life — from the convent education she abandoned, through her marriage to fellow patriot Manuel Padilla, to her leadership of the Loyal Battalion in the bloody campaigns of the Río de la Plata.
She died poor in Sucre in 1862, decades after independence had been won, and was buried in an unmarked grave. The museum corrects the historical neglect. Her remains were later repatriated to a tomb of honour, and the airport that served Sucre until 2016 was named for her. The exhibits are modest but the story is extraordinary and worth an hour.