Touching History: A Tour of the Tactile Stations

The tactile stations are mini exhibits, each devoted to a different theme, which give visitors a general, representative idea of a particular cultural period. These stations, of which there are seventeen in total, are distributed among the museum’s permanent exhibition galleries. We have used them to devise a tour itinerary that will guide you through the museum, from prehistory to the 19th century, with accurate replicas of original artefacts accompanied by tactile reliefs, models, maps and texts that paint a more complete picture of the general ideas in question.

The first stations present the first materials used by humans (stone, bone, pottery and bronze). Stone and bone are raw materials readily available in nature, while pottery and bronze are manufactured from raw materials like clay or metals whose physical properties can be altered by harnessing the power of fire.

In other cases, the stations show different technological, religious and social transformations through history, from antiquity to the Middle Ages, that substantially modified people’s ways of life, such as the arrival of the potter’s wheel on the Iberian Peninsula or Romanisation.

Finally, some stations highlight certain complex social, economic and political phenomena and elements (the invention of writing, the development of Mudéjar art or the important role of money) that effected radical changes in the societies where they were implemented and which developed over a very long period of time.

We hope you enjoy this tour, an original stroll through the galleries of the National Archaeological Museum that will let you “Touch History” with your own two hands.