Guam Museum

Guam’s main history museum was founded in 1932 in Agana, now Hagåtña, and became a government institution in 1936. Its early collections on the island’s pre-Spanish past were destroyed during the 1944 Battle of Guam after Japan’s wartime occupation. Re-established in the postwar years, it spent decades without a permanent home while also taking on a broader role in preserving historic structures and researching Guam’s history, folklore, and geology. Strongly championed by director Antonio Palomo, a long campaign for a permanent building culminated in the opening of the current Hagåtña facility in 2016. Operated by the Guam Department of Chamorro Affairs, it now holds more than 250,000 items and serves as both a cultural center and a symbol of recovery.

Guam