Guide to the National Archaeological Museum

Museum guide published by the Directorate-General of Tourism and distributed around 1945. This brief publication was clearly intended to offer visitors a highly informative and educational experience, in keeping with museological trends at the time. The cover features the museum’s facade, partly covered by garden vegetation, in its original state, which was not altered until the enlargement of the front staircase in the 1970s. The following pages describe the museum galleries with photographs, two floor plans and visiting hours.
This guide documents the installation known as the “Museum in Brief” (1940–1951), when only the highlights of the collection, from prehistory to the 19th century, were displayed in a few rooms. It featured a more modern display, with diaphanous glass cases far removed from the earlier, more historicist versions, accompanied by scale models and illustrations that helped visitors to contextualise and understand what they were seeing.