Vitrina CERO: Back to Childhood — Prehistory and Antiquity

A Punic baby bottle found in Ibiza shares a case with Egyptian leather shoes small enough to have been a child's. This Vitrina Cero is one showcase on how children were born, raised, taught and kept busy from the Palaeolithic to the end of the Roman world.

It runs in four parts: how archaeologists find children, care through pregnancy and the risky first years, learning by copying adults, and play. You finish at knucklebones, marbles, dice and dolls, toys that have barely changed in thousands of years. Beside them, four Nancy dolls wear Palaeolithic, Egyptian, Iberian and Greek outfits that Madrid's fashion design school worked out from archaeological data. Three get raffled; the Palaeolithic one joins the national collection, alongside the Lady of Elche.

It's one case on floor 0, where the permanent galleries start, by the shop, included in the €3 ticket (free Saturdays from 14:00 and Sunday mornings). Free one-hour visits with the Prehistory curators run on six dates from 12 November, bookable a week ahead.