The Museo Emilio Caraffa is a fine arts museum established by the Province of Cordoba, and located…read moreon the edge of Sarmiento Park. It's close to the Palacio Ferreyra and you can get a combined ticket for both museums if you start at the Palacio Ferreyra, which I recommend. Each museum takes 1-2 hours to go through, so you can easily see both in an afternoon. The Caraffa has mostly modern and contemporary art, with a focus on Argentine artists. When we were there in February 2015, the main exhibit was a 100-year retrospective of the museum's history, with a collection of its best-known artworks. Another exhibit featured a series of iconic, brightly colored sculptures called "La Fiesta Secreta." There was also an exhibit that seemed to be a province-wide competition of printmakers and lithographers, ranging widely in subject matter, skill level, and media. My favorite part about this museum is actually the stairs! The stairs between levels are black and the handrails and undersides are covered in black faux fur, while the walls are a bright lime green. I don't know whether it's art or just a fun design choice, but I enjoyed that they took a functional part of the museum and made it cool and eye-catching. The bathrooms are just OK (the soap in the ladies' room was an empty soda bottle refilled with pink soap and a hole cut in the lid), but they do at least have a whole row of stalls. There's a pretty decent gift shop that has inexpensive art postcards and books, but no English-language books that I saw. Some of the galleries felt empty or underused, and the exhibits that had multimedia videos played the audio at a deafeningly loud volume that didn't encourage us to stay there too long. But it's a large, interesting space and your experience will probably depend on which specific exhibitions are there when you go. Overall, maybe not something to go out of your way for on its own, but as part of a combined museum day with the Palacio Ferreyra, it's worth a visit.

Just so we're clear, I wasn't expecting the Paris Catacombs here. I'd done some research and knew…read morethat this was a small museum without a lot of exhibits, so my expectations were managed. Even so, we were kind of surprised by how little there was to see here. Many reviews mention that the entrance is hard to find, but we didn't think it was that difficult -- however, it's important to note that you'll be looking for a gate in the middle of the sidewalk with stairs leading down (like a subway station), not a building. There are actually two entrances and we found the closed, chained one first -- the actual entrance will have a green museum sign, as pictured. Once you go downstairs, you're pretty much right there. There is an open area off to one side with a series of vaulted stone arches, and you can walk through the empty room looking at the layers of stone and brick that made up the foundations. But you won't find any gravestones, plaques, or artifacts, let alone any grisly skeletal displays -- it's literally an empty room. It looks as though the central area is left open so that they can have musical performances, and one of the entrances seemed to have a program of upcoming choral and classical music events, which is probably a neat experience. Strangely, it looks like the crypt used to have a lot more as far as signs, exhibits, art, and artifacts. If you look up the circa-2011 YouTube video tour by Susana Provenza, you'll see plenty of explanatory signs and displays around the crypt, but none of those were there when we visited. Honestly, watching this video might be as much of a visit as you need, because it doesn't look like that today. Admission is inexpensive and their bathrooms are acceptable, so if you feel like spending a couple of bucks for a quick rest stop, the crypt won't take up much time. But don't feel bad if you don't get around to seeing this "museum."