Hacienda Knoche

The ruined laboratory and mausoleum of Dr Gottfried Knoche, on a hillside between Macuto and the Galipán cloud forest in the coastal mountains above Caracas, is one of the strangest places in Venezuela. A two-hour hike from the village of San José de Galipán brings you to the remains of the laboratory where Knoche developed his preservation fluid and to the small concrete mausoleum where he was found in 1971 still standing in his frock coat seventy years after his death.

The site has been thoroughly looted and vandalised since the 1990s — Knoche's mummy was destroyed, and only a few stone walls and the cracked mausoleum remain. The hike is the main attraction now: a steep climb through coffee farms with views across the Caribbean. Go with a local guide or experienced hiker; the path is not signposted.

things to do sight
A story
Dr Gottfried Knoche, a German-born physician who settled near La Guaira in the 1850s, invented an embalming fluid whose recipe died with him in 1901 — but not before he had embalmed himself and laid out his body in a mausoleum on his estate. The bodies of his family and several patients were stored as upright mummies for decades; vandalism and earthquakes have since destroyed most of what remained.