Museo Gustavo Le Paige

The Museo Gustavo Le Paige is the best reason, after the landscape, to spend time in San Pedro de Atacama. Run by the Universidad Católica del Norte, it holds one of the most important archaeological collections in South America, covering 11,000 years of human occupation of the Atacama Desert.

The Atacameño people built a sophisticated pre-Columbian culture in this desert, farming through irrigation, trading across vast distances (copper, gold, lapis lazuli), and developing distinctive textile and ceramic traditions. The museum's collections — mummies, textiles, ceramics, tools, weapons, and ornaments — document this culture in depth. The mummies are remarkable: the extreme dryness of the desert has preserved them for thousands of years, and several are displayed with their original clothing and grave goods intact.

The museum has been substantially renovated and its presentation updated. The building sits just off the main plaza and is easily found. Allow at least two hours — the collection is extensive, and the context it provides for the landscape you'll be exploring outside makes the visits to the geysers, salt flats, and fortress sites considerably more meaningful.

things to do museum
A story
Gustavo Le Paige was a Belgian Jesuit priest who arrived in San Pedro in 1954 and spent the next 26 years excavating the surrounding desert, recovering some 380,000 artefacts and thousands of human remains. He kept virtually everything in his house, which eventually became this museum. His methods were those of his era rather than modern standards, but his dedication transformed understanding of the Atacameño civilisation — and he never left. He died in San Pedro in 1980, aged 77.