Museo Centro Cultural Manta

The city's main museum, on the Malecón near Playa Murciélago, with a good collection of ceramics, stone U-shaped seats (sillas Manteñas), and gold ornaments from the Manta and Chorrera cultures. Some pieces date from 3,500 BC; the most striking are the carved stone thrones the Manta nobility used, found at sites across Manabí.

The collection passed through several institutional owners — for years it was housed at the Banco Central — and labelling is uneven, but for anyone interested in pre-Columbian Ecuador beyond the Inca, this is the best stop on the central coast. Allow an hour.

things to do museum
A story
The Manta culture, which dominated this coast from roughly 600 AD to the Spanish arrival, were among the great ocean-going traders of the pre-Columbian Americas. They built ocean-worthy balsa rafts and reached as far north as western Mexico, trading red Spondylus shell — sacred to Andean cultures — for goods unobtainable in Ecuador.