Cahuachi & Antonini Museum

Description Visit to the Antonini Museum in Ica

With the tour “Visit the Antonini Museum in Ica”, you can visit the largest ceremonial center of adobe cahuachi in the world and the Antonini Museum; a didactic museum where we can see a collection of archaeological pieces of the different stages of the Nazca culture.

CAHUACHI, was a ceremonial center of the Nazca civilization from the first to the sixth century, located about 30 km from Nazca, near the famous lines. Its name means the place where the seers live.

The resident population was small, because Cahuachi served primarily as a ceremonial center for events that may have included the Nazca lines and the giant sand dune (Cerro Blanco). Archaeological clues support the theory of function as a pilgrimage site.

THE ANTONINI ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM is located in Nazca. It contains a large part of the findings recovered by the Italian mission called Nazca Project 1982-2011. The Antonini Archaeological Museum, managed by the Centro Italiano Studi e Ricerche Archeologiche Precolombiane (CISRAP) under the direction of the Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici, preserves and studies the archaeological heritage of the Nazca area, coming from the archaeological research work that has been carried out in the ceremonial center of Cahuachi and other important sites of the Nazca River Valley since 1982.

The three large rooms that follow are dedicated to a rich exhibition of ceramics, textiles, bone artifacts, shell, wood, clay, basketry works, pyrography gourds, bone and plant remains, the museum has some reconstructions of masonry elements, columns, typical stairs, even the simplest diaphragms, such as quincha walls.

Textiles, one of the arts in which the Nazca achieved great prestige, is also represented by some pieces that are unique for the iconographic elements that characterize them. The music also had great importance especially if we consider it as an element during the ceremonies officiated in Cahuachi or during actions related to funeral rites. The museum has one of the most important sets of ceramic antaras in the world. The last room includes materials belonging to the middle and final phases of Nazca.

MAIN POINTS OF VISIT

• ca (406 masl)
• Nazca (520 masl)
• Cahuachi (360 masl)

Day 1: Nazca – Antonini Museum – Cahuachi -Nazca

• 08.45 hrs This tour starts picking you up at the hotel in Nazca.
• Antonini Museum Tour: 09.00 hrs we start our tour with a visit to the Antonini Museum. In this didactic museum, we will be able to see a collection of archaeological pieces of the different stages of the Nazca culture, trophy heads, musical instruments like antaras, textiles, funerary bundles. These findings are the result of excavations in the citadel of Cahuachi in recent years.
• Tour Ceremonial Center of Cahuachi: After this interesting visit, we continue our journey about 28 km, we will arrive at the Ceremonial Center of Cahuachi, is the largest adobe ceremonial center in the world with 24 square kilometers of extension. In this enigmatic place full of great mysteries we will know the most important sectors such as the ancient city, the great pyramid, the most imposing monument of Cahuachi.
• Also, we will see the stepped temple, the ceremonial squares and a series of constructions that will help us to understand how the Nazca man lived more than 2,000 years ago.
• 13.00 hrs Transfer to your hotel.

BREAKFAST – HOTEL / LUNCH and DINNER – PASSENGER