Qualla: Museo Popol Vuh

Museo Popol Vuh: Introduction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The pottery is nine thousand years old, and it sits behind glass in a building that could pass for a corporate office. That tension — between the deep antiquity of the objects and the clean, geometric modernism of the space that holds them — defines the Museo Popol Vuh. Located on the campus of Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Zone 10 of Guatemala City, this private museum houses one of the most significant collections of Maya art anywhere in the world. Its neutral-colored walls and advanced display technology deliberately recede, directing attention entirely to what the Maya made: painted ceramics depicting gods and kings, hieroglyphic texts recording political alliances, plumbate pottery traded across Mesoamerica, and colonial sculptures that mark the collision between two civilizations.

Read more: Museo Popol Vuh on Qualla

Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museo Popol Vuh: One Collector's Obsession

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum began as one man's private collection. In 1975, Jorge Castillo hired Maro Tejada, an archaeology student at Universidad del Valle, to classify the archaeological and colonial pieces he and his wife Ella had been accumulating for years. Once catalogued and arranged in c...

Read more: Museo Popol Vuh on Qualla

Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museo Popol Vuh: The Book and the Museum

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clemens Schmillen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum takes its name from the Popol Vuh, a book written shortly after the Spanish conquest of Guatemala that narrates the mythology and pre-Columbian history of the K'iche' Maya. The K'iche' kings had dominated much of Guatemala's western highland plateau, and their creation...

Read more: Museo Popol Vuh on Qualla

Image: Clemens Schmillen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museo Popol Vuh: Nine Millennia on Display

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The collection spans an almost incomprehensible range of time. Archaic-period pieces from 9000 to 1500 BC, excavated from the central highlands and the eastern Pacific coast, include the ceramics of communities making the transition from nomadic life to permanent agricultural set...

Read more: Museo Popol Vuh on Qualla

Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Museo Popol Vuh: A Modern Vessel for Ancient Things

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Museo Popol Vuh is among the most modern museums in Guatemala in terms of its physical design. Its geometric architecture deliberately contrasts with both the Maya ruins and the Spanish Renaissance structures scattered across Guatemala City. Inside, artifacts are displayed be...

Read more: Museo Popol Vuh on Qualla

Image: Simon Burchell | CC BY-SA 4.0