Santo Domingo's Museum

The ex-convento de Santo Domingo has been in large part turned into a museum. There are gallery after gallery filled with pre-Columbian artifacts, Spanish Colonial artifacts and art, and post-independence items. We exhausted ourselves and groaned when we came across yet another corridor of galleries.

Here are just a few of the things in the museum beginning with the central courtyard.

The vaulting in the cloister that surrounds the central courtyard.

Even the pre-Columbian Indians understood the importance of a strong back.

I cannot resist the skulls and often they are the best lighted, and thus the easiest to photograph, of all the items on display.

The walls and ceilings had a lustrous, polished, but soft finish.

An empty, interior courtyard.

I think this Spanish figure looks just like the guy who played Charles Winchester III on the M*A*S*H TV series--even to the bald spot on top.

In the stairwells there was heavy gilding and high relief sculpture.