AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Tucked on Junín Street in Oruro, the Cardozo Velásquez House Museum is a family home transformed into a living artwork — part gallery, part sculpture garden, part Andean shrine. Bolivian sculptor Gonzalo Cardozo and his potter wife María spent three decades filling every courtyard, wall, and gateway with their own creations alongside works they traded for with Bolivia's most celebrated painters.↗↗
Gonzalo died in 2021, but his wife and five daughters — all named in Aymara — continue to welcome visitors, lead personal tours through the labyrinthine rooms, and run after-school sculpture classes for local children. The museum remains one of Oruro's most memorable stops.↗↗
A Home Built as Art
The story begins in the early 1990s when Gonzalo Cardozo, a self-taught sculptor in stone, wood, and bronze, and his wife María Velásquez set out to reshape their family house into something extraordinary. "We never thought about making a museum; we just wanted to live differently," Gonzalo once said. By 1993 the doors opened to the public, and the collection has only grown denser since.