1871-1895 The First Museum

Partial exterior view of the Casino de la Reina. Drawing and lithograph by Francisco Pérez. M. Romanticism, inv. no. CE0824/9

The initial exhibition at the Casino de la Reina reflected the criteria of the day, namely to exhibit every object owned by the museum. The galleries were filled with collections from “primitive and ancient times”, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, and included Numismatics and Ethnography sections, with artefacts from distant lands.

It was the first time that a museum in Spain had presented the public with such a wide variety of objects spanning so many periods and cultures. Salto de línea