Plundering the Golden Lake

One of the most incredible pieces in the Bogotá Gold Museum, made with the “lost wax” process thousands of years ago and found by accident by a young boy in a field.

Golden objects to be worn by chieftains. The Conquistadors seized all pre-Columbian gold objects temples and burial sites they could get their hands on so that they to be melted down into the proverbial Spanish “pieces of eight.”

A typical Spanish galleon that carried gold and other loot from New Spain and New Granada (modern-day Colombia) from ports such as Cartagena to Spain in the 16th and early 17th century. In spite of this massive influx of specie from its colonial possessions, the Spanish Habsburg monarchy stagnated and declined in influence due to fiscal mismanagement and administrative incompetence.