The Mint of Santa Fe de Nuevo Reino

In the collection

1. 

   2 escudos · Bogotá · ND (Philip V)

   ND · Gold .917 (type specification)

   Open the record →
2. 

   1 escudo · Bogotá NR–JJ · 1795

   1795 · Gold .875 (type specification)

   Open the record →
3. 

   1 escudo · Bogotá NR–JJ · 1802

   1802 · Gold .875 (type specification)

   Open the record →
4. 

   1 real · Bogotá NR–JF · 1810

   1810 · Silver .896 (type specification)

   Open the record →
5. 

   1 escudo · Bogotá NR–JF · 1811

   1811 · Gold .875 (type specification)

   Open the record →
6. 

   1 escudo · Bogotá NR–JF · 1820

   1820 · Gold .875 (type specification)

   Open the record →
7. 

   8 reales · Bogotá BA–JF · 1821

   1821 · Silver .666 (type specification)

   Open the record →
8. 

   1 peso · Bogotá JF · 1826

   1826 · Gold .875 (type specification)

   Open the record →
9. 

   2 centavos · Lazaretto · 1921

   1921 · Copper-nickel (type specification)

   Open the record →

The mint in archival images

The courtyard, the doorway, and a screw press help read the house as a workshop: not only as a catalogue row.

The founding and the first American gold

Before there was a mint, the New Kingdom paid in gold dust — sometimes measured in quills — and in tejos of no fixed weight or fineness. That hindered the royal fifth and inland trade. Mexico had a mint from 1535 and Lima from 1565; Santa Fe did not. Around 1590 Philip II ordered a mint that never opened.

In 1620 Philip III authorized the engineer Alonso Turrillo de Yebra to found the mint of Santa Fe. The Banco de la República dates that founding to 1620; the Casa de Moneda Museum recalls the work of 1621, in a rented low house in La Candelaria. From those anvils came the first gold coined in the Americas: escudos and doblones, chiefly of one and two escudos in the seventeenth century, while Potosí, Lima, and Mexico concentrated on silver.

Turrillo for a time kept an office at Cartagena de Indias, closed about 1634. When that branch ended, Santa Fe remained the permanent mint of the New Kingdom. Juan Friede published in 1963 the 1614–1635 documents held in the Archivo General de Indias. Antonio María Barriga Villalba systematized the colonial archive in the three volumes of 1969.

Cobs

The first century was a smithy. Metal was poured, thinned by hammer, cut with shears, and struck by hand. The pieces — cobs — came out irregular: the Habsburg shield, the cross potent, and the legend rarely fitted whole. An unreeded edge invited clipping.

Even so, those discs were New Granada’s circulating coin. The Mesuno hoard holds Santafé doblones of 1629–1636. This case holds a gold cob attributed to Santa Fe in the name of Philip V: the ND 2 escudos, from the style of the shield and cross, not from a readable mintmark.

Assayers and mint marks

The assayer answered for the fineness. His initial went on the disc; a light coin could cost him the post. Santa Fe did not use a single mark. Against Potosí’s P or Mexico’s Mo, here one finds NR, RN, SF, monograms, and, later, BA on Cundinamarca silver.

The table below follows the sequence Barriga Villalba and the study of 2-escudo doblones have rebuilt for the seventeenth century and the turn to Philip V. It does not name the people behind JJ or JF on the milled coin in this collection. This case’s Philip V cob does not fix an assayer.

Assayers of the 2-escudo cobs

Sequence rebuilt for Santa Fe gold 2 escudos, after Barriga Villalba and surviving pieces. It is not the list of JJ or JF on the milled coin in this collection.

The 1715 fleet

Santa Fe gold did not stay on the highland. On 31 July 1715 the hurricane wrecked Juan Esteban de Ubilla’s fleet off Florida. Among the treasure recovered from the 1950s are Bogotá 2 escudos of 1649 and 1701, and pillar-and-wave silver. The volume of uncirculated pieces of assayer Buenaventura de Arce Penagos — at work about 1692–1722 — allowed die studies the archive alone does not give.

The Bourbons, Solís, and the reeded edge

In 1751 the Crown took the mint into royal administration. Between 1753 and 1756 Tomás Sánchez Reciente redesigned the two-storey cloister that now faces Calle 11 at Carrera 5. Viceroy José Solís Folch de Cardona reopened it in 1756: the year is still on the stone frieze. Screw presses made round reeded coin so clipping of the edge would show.

That is the module of the 1795 and 1802 NR–JJ 1 escudos, the 1810 real, and the 1811 and 1820 NR–JF 1 escudos. Reserved cédulas of 1771 and 1786 secretly cut gold and silver fineness. Luis Ángel Arango gives the carats: 22 in 1751; 21 and 2½ granos (0.901) in 1771; 21 (0.875) from 10 January 1787.

The sister house at Popayán

Miners of Cauca and Chocó paid the journey to Bogotá. Popayán was authorized by a royal cédula of 1729; Pedro Agustín de Valencia began reeded coin there in 1758. Banrepcultural’s encyclopedia records the closure after disputes and the 1766 royal cédula. This case does not mix the two houses: Popayán’s KM# 56.2 — five Charles IV P–JF discs — has its own page. The 1791 P–SF 2 escudos and the 1801 P–JF 8 escudos stay there too.

Independence and Gran Colombia

In 1811 the Santafé mint went into crisis. Cartagena struck coppers; in 1813 Nariño ordered the china coin. After Boyacá, Bolívar took the Bogotá and Popayán houses and, on 18 August 1819, asked for the same Indian type. This case’s 1820 NR–JF 1 escudo still carries Ferdinand VII’s legend and Charles IV’s bust. The 1821 BA–JF 8 reales already shows the Indian and Cundinamarca’s pomegranate. The 1826 JF gold peso is republican: Liberty and the arms of 1821.

The Cúcuta Congress tried to restore Spanish fineness; Santander evaded the rule with antedated issues. The museum booklet records the first republican peso of 1825. This page does not treat Cartagena copper or the Santa Marta siege cuartillo: other mints, other records.

From the Republic to Ibagué

The nineteenth century changed the country’s name and the dies. In 1836 the regime was unified; in 1846–1847 Lino de Pombo and Florentino González imposed 0.900 fine metal and the decimal system. In the 1880s Bogotá installed steam presses from Ralph Heaton & Sons. Popayán ceased in 1881. Bogotá and Medellín closed about 1890, and Bogotá resumed in 1906.

Law 25 of 1923, on the Kemmerer mission’s project, created the Banco de la República. The Bank, on its timeline, took over the Bogotá mint in 1946 and bought Medellín in 1953. On 9 April 1948 the house held in the Bogotazo. In 1982 Ibagué began making planchets; in 1987 striking moved there. Santa Fe ceased after 366 years. This case’s 1921 Lazaretto 2 centavos was struck at Bogotá for the lazaretto cordon: it is not colonial coin, and it has a type page under Numismatics of the Lazarettos.

From factory to museum

Decree 1584 of 11 August 1975 declared the building a national monument. A first public museum opened in the early 1960s. The permanent exhibition opened in December 1996, at Calle 11 no. 4-93. The cloister now anchors the Bank’s Cultural Block, beside the Botero Museum and MAMU.

From September 2021 to 23 July 2023 the Casa de Moneda Museum was renewed for the Bank’s centenary. The new museography received the iF Design Award 2025 in interior architecture for cultural exhibitions. In July 2024 the room “21st Century. A country that changes its image” opened. The 2019 Boletín Cultural places the Bank’s collection above 18,000 pieces; the permanent display gathers, on the recent script, about 1,700.

What this case holds

Nine discs: the Philip V cob; the 1795 and 1802 NR–JJ 1 escudos; the 1810 NR–JF real; the 1811 and 1820 NR–JF 1 escudos; the 1821 BA–JF 8 reales; the 1826 JF gold peso; and the 1921 Lazaretto 2 centavos. The 1916 50 centavos (KM# 193.1) is listed as Birmingham / Bogotá, with no mark on the disc: it does not enter here. Neither does the 1931 Lazaretto 50 centavos, without a mint mark, nor the Santander coscojas, nor Popayán.

No slab census and no hammer are published. Photographs do not authenticate the metal. BanRep’s coin tables begin in 1987.