Tequendama Falls Museum 3.16

The Tequendama Falls Museum of Biodiversity and Culture is a museum and mansion in San Antonio del Tequendama, Colombia. The museum overlooks Tequendama Falls on the Bogotá River. Before renovation, the building was an abandoned hotel, known as the Tequendama Falls Hotel .EtymologyThe name Tequendama means in the Chibcha language of the Muisca people "he who precipitated downward".HistoryMansionIn 1923, the building was constructed as a mansion by the architect Carlos Arturo Tapias, as a symbol of the joy and elegance of the elite citizens of the 20s. "The Mansion of Tequendama Falls", as the house was called, was built during the presidency of Pedro Nel Ospina (1922-1926). The Tequendama Falls Hotel was reached by train from Bogotá.HotelBy 1928, the building had opened as a hotel and starting in July 1950, the building was to be reconstructed into an eighteen floor hotel, but that construction never began. Gabriel Largacha was the designer and Domenico Parma was the constructor. The hotel was later abandoned in the early 90s for more than two decades due to Bogotá River contamination.MuseumThe Institute of Natural Sciences of the National University of Colombia and the Ecological Farm Foundation of Porvenir were jointly in charge of the renovations to convert the hotel into a museum. The mansion reopened as a museum in 2013 with its first exhibit: "Caverns, ecosystems of the subterranean world".