Monte Alban Treasures, Archaeological Museum and Ex-Convent

Another place in Oaxaca worth visiting is the vast and beautiful Ex-Convent and Museum of Archaeological Culture (containing the Monte Alban, et al., treasures) next to the cathedral. Although the nice museum at the ruin site itself is fairly substantial in its own right, this museum in Oaxaca City was astounding in the depth, quantity, and quality of the artifacts it presented.

There was room after room of innumerable examples of ancient Zapotec and Mixtec pottery, sculpture, and jewelry (as well as a library of 300-600yr old books, convent & conquistador artifacts, 19th century clothes, portraits, and technology, and exhibits on modern-day indigenas culture, in an architecturally gorgeous castlelike former convent). Most of these items had been recovered from the many tombs at Monte Alban and surrounding Valley sites, and truly constitute a National Treasure for the people of Mexico.