Museo Cementerio Presbítero Maestro
Peru's first public cemetery, opened in 1808 in Barrios Altos and a museum since 1999: marble and bronze mausoleums and sculptures, the Crypt of the Heroes of the War of the Pacific and the graves of Grau, Bolognesi, Palma and Mariátegui.
Opening hours
Hours
- Monday
- 09:00–16:00
- Tuesday
- 09:00–16:00
- Wednesday
- 09:00–16:00
- Thursday
- 09:00–16:00
- Friday
- 09:00–16:00
- Saturday
- 09:00–16:00
- Sunday
- 09:00–16:00
About Museo Cementerio Presbítero Maestro
The Museo Cementerio Presbítero Matías Maestro is on block 17 of Jr. Áncash, in Barrios Altos, and is run by the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Lima Metropolitana. It opened on 31 May 1808 as the country's first public cemetery; it was declared a historic monument in 1972 and was named a museum in 1999 (Panamericana, 2023). It covers some 22 hectares with hundreds of mausoleums and monuments, sculptures by artists such as Damián Campeny and Louis-Ernest Barrias, and the Crypt of the Heroes, which holds the remains of defenders from the War of the Pacific; Miguel Grau, Francisco Bolognesi, Ramón Castilla, Ricardo Palma and José Carlos Mariátegui are among those buried here (Andina). Our take: it is an open-air museum of funerary sculpture and is best visited with a guide, because without context it is easy to get lost among the sections. The Beneficencia runs daytime guided visits and night tours. Curation note: the hours (daily, 9:00 to 16:00) come only from Google and there is no official admission price published.
Location
Museo Cementerio Presbítero Maestro
Jr. Áncash cuadra 17, Barrios Altos, Cercado de Lima