Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is to be embalmed and displayed in the barracks where he plotted a failed coup.

The barracks are being converted into a Museum of the Revolution.

The former paratrooper, whose socialist revolution delighted the poor and infuriated the wealthy, will be embalmed "like Ho Chi Minh, Lenin and Mao" and kept in a glass casket.

It was there that the Chavez had spearheaded what proved to be a failed coup against president Carlos Andres Perez on February 4, 1992. His arrest turned him into a hero, leading to his 1998 election victory.

Interim leader Nicolas Maduro suggested that Chavez may one day be moved elsewhere, a nod to popular pressure for him to be taken to the national pantheon to lie alongside Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

Chavez is lying in state in a half-open glass-covered casket in the Caracas military academy, wearing olive green military fatigues, a black tie and the iconic red beret that became a symbol of his 14-year socialist rule.

A funeral will take place on Friday after which he will be transferred to the barracks to lie in state for a further seven days.