Bolivia's Most Visited Museum Begins Five-Year Restoration as Roofs Reach Critical State

Bolivia's most visited museum, the Casa Nacional de Moneda in Potosí, will begin a major restoration next month — a project expected to take five years to complete.

The Casa Nacional de Moneda, a former colonial mint built between 1759 and 1773 to a design by the architect Salvador de Villa, is Bolivia's biggest museum draw. But around 60% of its roofs are in critical condition after a decade without maintenance, according to the museum's director, Daniel Oropeza, who announced the project The Art Newspaper.

Work will start with the leaking roofs — 3,178 square metres of them across the building's front and central blocks — and then move on to the stonework. The roof phase alone is scheduled to last 150 days, during which the museum plans to stay open to visitors.

The Inter-American Development Bank is financing 5.9 million Bolivianos (roughly US$513,000) for the roof work, with the Central Bank of Bolivia covering the remainder of the full restoration. The Cultural Foundation of the Central Bank of Bolivia manages the site's 15,000 square metres of built space, and the Bolivian Ministry of Tourism is promoting the project La Razón.

This is only the second comprehensive restoration in the building's long history. The first began in 1940 and ran until 1973. The tender for the current work was launched on April 30, 2026, and in November 2025 cargo vehicles entered the mint's patios for the first time in over eighty years, in preparation for the construction effort.

Potosí itself is no ordinary setting. The city grew fabulously wealthy in the 16th century on the silver extracted from the mountain that looms above it, Cerro Rico, and the Casa Nacional de Moneda was where that silver became coinage. The building has served as a mint, a military barracks and a prison across its 250-plus years before becoming a museum.

For a building that has weathered centuries, ten years of neglect is a relatively short chapter — but one that left water working its way through roofs and into walls. The goal now, as Oropeza framed it, is to stabilise the structure and halt the deterioration before it spreads further.