Monte Alban, Ancient Zapotec ruins at Oaxaca, Mexico, and Cultural Museum artifacts

To see the above panorama truly full size, click HERE, where you should be able to click on it, and scroll end to end, with the shot filling your screen. This was taken from the extreme south end of Monte Alban, the ancient Zapotec ruins just outside of Oaxaca City. In the center is, to me, the most fascinating of the many structures, the odd shaped building used to calculate the changing of the seasons.

Here's a shot of me standing at pretty much the same viewpoint.

At the south end of Monte Alban, February 2017

There is a great many photos online taken at Monte Alban, but I've found a lack of photos from the Oaxaca Cultural Museum, which surely should be included in any trip to Monte Alban, as the best of the artifacts saved from the ruins are preserved there, in a uniquely beautiful building, a colonial convent connected to the amazing Santa Domingo church. So, from here, I'm jumping right to shots of some of those many artifacts on display at the museum.

Part of the church and convent grounds is a large arboretum of desert plants. This view is from a museum window

My favorite image from Monte Alban artifacts, and currently my facebook page cover picture

 Julia Kazarina, mandalera extraordinaire, and her daughter Masha, who accompanied me to the museum

 Part of the amazing former convent courtyard

One of the saved gold artifacts

 The front of the Santa Domingo church and convent that houses the museum

Julia, wishing she could reach some of the seed pods