The Casa Dorada — the Golden House — is Tarija's most architecturally distinctive building, a lavish Moorish-influenced mansion built in the early 20th century by a rubber-boom merchant. The facade is elaborately ornamented with stucco decoration, Moorish arches, and tiled surfaces that create a visual spectacle out of place in the otherwise sober colonial streetscape.
The interior has been converted into a museum of local history, covering the pre-Columbian period, the Spanish colonial era, and Tarija's 19th and 20th-century development. The exhibits are modest but the building itself is the real attraction. The central courtyard with its tiled floors and iron-grille windows gives a sense of how wealthy merchants in the region lived before the rubber wealth evaporated.