Salta: the high-altitude mummies and the colonial centre

Nicknamed 'Salta la Linda' for its well-preserved colonial architecture, this northwestern Argentine city also houses one of archaeology's most delicate findings from the high Andes.

The center can be explored on foot; for Cerro San Bernardo there is a cable car.

On Plaza 9 de Julio, the Neoclassical Cathedral with a pink and cream facade dominates the city's historic colonial center.

Just steps away, the MAAM, Museum of High-Altitude Archeology, preserves the bodies of three Inca children sacrificed about five hundred years ago on the peak of Llullaillaco volcano, remarkably preserved by the cold and altitude.

Riding the Cerro San Bernardo cable car, one dominates the entire city framed between the surrounding mountains.

Returning to the center in the evening, the colonial streets around the plaza remain animated by peñas where Andean folk music is listened to live, often accompanied by charango and bombo legüero.

For ethical and conservation reasons, the museum displays only one of the three mummies at a time, rotating them, and only for limited periods: most of the year they remain out of public view in a climate-controlled chamber.

The expedition that discovered them in 1999 found them so well preserved that they could analyze even the last meal the children consumed before the ritual sacrifice.