"Whenever a grave was discovered or a burial mound was found, earpieces, bracelets, breastplates, toads and small snakes were gathered up, and whoever had made the 'find' then took the gold items in their knapsacks to the mint or the bank, where they were weighed and the equivalent in paper money was handed over, after which the gold was melted down. Not even the ladies were allowed the extravagance of keeping indigenous curiosities for brooches or earrings", lamented Germán Arciniegas in his "Secrets of El Dorado" at a time when any gold that was found in Colombia used to be melted down - well into the 20th century, before 1939, that is.

It was that year that a visionary by the name of Julio Caro advised the Banco de la República Board to halt this plundering of the nation's heritage and to start keeping the objects that grave plunderers had been taking to galleries and art dealers for years. "Much better for them to be kept here than to be melted down or to leave the country, get dispersed and fall into private hands", thought the man whose name was to go down in history.

From that moment on, the incipient collection - which was still not looked upon as such - began to take shape. But it had no home. Until 1947 it was displayed in the Bank's boardroom. Beside it, the bust of Bolívar, a clear sign of the eagerness to exalt two precise periods in the nation's history: the pre-Hispanic past and the birth of the republic.

Afterwards, it was visiting diplomatic delegations who were able to marvel at its beauty. Between 1947 and 1959, the obligatory visit to view the pre-Hispanic marvels was a source of great pride to bankers.

However, a question then began to be asked: why not show these magnificent and hitherto unknown objects to Colombians as well? An exhibition room was accordingly set up from 1959 to 1968 in the basement of the Banco de la República's new building, and the general public were allowed to view the objects. And it was at this point that a whole new chapter started for the museum.

"There was still no realisation that it was a museum. That basement was an enormous corridor something like fifty metres long, with showcases all along it, from which a number of representative objects were hung in a purely decorative fashion - complete with curtains behind them. There was some arrangement by archaeological area, but people still did not know what a museum was. Nor did we, either", recalls Germán Samper, the architect who, with his firm Esguerra, Sáenz & Samper, designed the building that has housed the Gold Museum until now and which won the National Architecture Award in 1970.

Therefore, when one floor in a projected new Bank building was going to be set aside "so that the jewels could be housed better", he knew that the basement idea could not be repeated higher up, and that those objects were more than jewels. Together with his partners, he sought the advice - "secretly" - of Luis Duque Gómez, who was Director of the Colombian Anthropology Institute at the time. "This is our chance, the time to show the country the riches of our past!", Duque Gómez apparently exclaimed, and he recommended that they talk to the people who were then designing the Mexican Museum of Anthropology.

These three men therefore set out, without knowing how to tell the manager of the Banco de la República that what they needed was not one floor but a whole building, because what they were planning was a museum rather than a store for valuable objects. A week was enough to convince them that they had to establish a scientific museum, and that it was therefore essential to form a scientific team that would study what the objects had meant to the cultures that made them. There was a need to rid gold of its decorative sense and understand that behind it lay a vast context that was waiting to be investigated. Then, they realised that specialist professionals were needed, people who could translate those meanings into the way the objects were to be arranged and displayed - museologists, in other words. They were also clear that a museum's raison d'être is to show things to the public, to stir up opinion, and above all, to be useful and didactic.

A tremendous challenge, because it was one of the first purpose-built museums, and with all that thought behind it. They went beyond their call of duty as builders and created a concept. They saw architecture as the ideal way to express and contain ideas about the past.

That building, a perfect prism, became the symbol of modern architecture in the country.

Four floors where the varied contexts and applied technologies of the objects were displayed, a labyrinth of small rooms that invited an intimate contemplation of the objects on display, and one large room which brought all that splendour together and exhibited it like a flash of light that dazzled because of its very richness - the famous "Salón Dorado".

An effective experience, one that has brought the whole country and millions of visitors from abroad together over a period of thirty six years, around one single idea of identity.