Casa Museo María Reiche

The Casa Museo María Reiche showcases artifacts, maps, and research materials from Maria Reiche’s studies on the Nazca Lines, located in her former residence.

Planning your visit

Maria Reiche spent fifty years on the Nazca lines. A German mathematician who arrived in Peru in 1932, she began surveying the geoglyphs in the 1940s, swept the desert clear of debris with a broom to preserve the figures, mapped them, campaigned for their protection, and lived for decades in a small house at the edge of the pampa with almost no money — largely responsible for the lines surviving the twentieth century and becoming a UNESCO site.

The museum is that house. It holds her maps, drawings, measuring instruments, papers, personal effects and the modest rooms she occupied, along with her grave in the garden.

Her theory that the lines encoded an astronomical calendar has been substantially revised by later scholarship, which now emphasises water, ritual processions and ceremonial function, but her documentation remains the foundation of the field.

The museum is small and takes half an hour. It sits on the Pan-American highway near the observation tower.

Bookable options are tours combining the museum with the Nazca lines viewpoints, which is the practical way to visit given the distances involved. Current availability is listed below.