The Altamira Museum commemorates Book Day with an exhibition that shows the first tourist guides from its library, published between 1926 and 1935, when visits to the World Heritage cave began.
“Links: Altamira and the beginnings of tourism. A journey towards the first art” is the title of this exhibition, which can be visited from this Tuesday until the end of July.
Six travel guides published between 1926 and 1935 by the Altamira Cave Protection Board and the National Tourist Board, which had commissioned Hugo Obermaier, one of the first prehistorians to investigate the Altamira cave, are shown.
Throughout its pages, Obermaier briefly introduces the ways of life during the Paleolithic era, describes the history of the discovery and the first adaptations of the cave for tourist visits, as well as recounting the art of Altamira.
Along with these explanations, the guides, also in English, included maps and itineraries detailing information on public transport, towns and the most important monuments in the area.
Tickets for two pesetas
Along with these travel guides, an entrance to the cave issued by the Junta (between 1925 and 1939) is on display, called the “personal ticket to visit the cave”, for two pesetas, which already detailed basic visiting rules.
As the center explains, the publication of the guides is parallel to the growth of visits to Altamira, which also forced the institutions to provide this place with infrastructures and services, for which an access road and a small museum were built. in a mountain house.
The guides were considered a powerful information and propaganda tool, and initially they were small-format editions, easy to transport and containing the necessary information to plan the visit.
Heritage on Altamira
The old collection of the Museum of Altamira houses a wide heritage related to the cave and its rock art, among other publications, documents and historical objects that recount the evolution of the cave from its discovery to the present day.
The museum’s library manages a specialized collection in fields such as archaeology, prehistory and rock art, and the old collection of publications in which those first tourist guides can be found, which have been restored.
In the week of World Book Day, the museum also joins the international book liberation campaign to share readings and make the world a library.
From April 20 to 23, people who visit the center will be able to drop off and pick up books on a wide range of topics for free.
Each of them is accredited on the official ‘Bookcrossing’ page, so that readers can record their steps so that these books continue to travel and that other people enjoy reading them.
The entry The guides of Altamira at the beginning of the 20th century was first published in EFE Noticias.