Cuenca · EC

Pumapungo Museum

Pumapungo is one of Cuenca's most rewarding stops because it is two places at once: an indoor museum of archaeology, ethnography and art, wrapped around a sprawling open-air complex of Inca ruins. Set just southeast of the historic center at Calle Larga and Avenida Huayna Cápac, it lets a visitor step from glass cases full of pre-Columbian ceramics and gold straight onto the stone foundations of an ancient city. The ground you walk on is the ceremonial and administrative quarter of Tomebamba, the great Inca city raised over the older Cañari settlement of Guapondelig after the empire's conquest of this region in the late 15th century. Long considered second only to Cuzco in importance, the site takes its evocative name, Pumapungo, from the phrase meaning 'Door of the Puma.'