Casa del Fundador Gonzalo Suárez Rendón

Last surviving founder's house in Latin America with hidden murals

The last surviving founder's house in all of Latin America, built between 1540 and 1570 by Muisca labourers for Tunja's Spanish founder. It sat largely unremarked for centuries until a false ceiling collapsed, revealing extraordinary painted murals covering the wooden beams above: a menagerie of animals from three continents — rhinos, elephants, monkeys, and local fauna — painted in the 1540s by someone who clearly had access to European natural history books, or an exceptionally vivid imagination.

The house faces directly onto Plaza de Bolívar. Admission is cheap and the guided tour is worth it.

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A story
The painted ceiling in the main room was hidden under a later false ceiling for generations. When that ceiling collapsed in the 20th century, conservators found the original beams covered in detailed depictions of animals from Africa, Asia, and the Americas — painted within a few years of Tunja's founding, by artists who had never seen most of the creatures they depicted.

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