A Roman toy story
Each year, tourists gravitate to Tarragona and visit its UNESCO-listed Roman sites. A highlight is understandably the amphitheatre with its Mediterranean backdrop, which even on a dull day evokes hazy scenes from the movie Gladiator with toga-clad spectators being gruesomely entertained.
But to really bring the Roman world to life and make it feel close to us, there's a single exhibit in the MNAT Archeological Museum to see, which is currently in a temporary exhibition space down at the docks.
The museum contains the assortments of odds and ends that are found in museums all over the former Roman Empire including the usual amphora, mosaics, lead piping, statues with noses or whole heads missing. But we're here to see one object that's just a few centimetres high.
Its a doll with articulated limbs. It's not particularly well made - gangly and out of proportion. If I brought it home as a souvenir for my daughter, it would end up at the back of the cupboard.
But this ugly little doll meant something to someone - a girl of around five or six years old.
It was found in her grave.
It would take a heart of stone not to be moved. But our sympathy for her parents and the pain they must have felt leaving a doll in her coffin is a gift to us.
By invoking our emotions, we can empathise with them and see the other remnants of their world in that light. The mosaics being walked on, the amphora being upended, the statue being admired, laughed at or ignored. The Roman world becomes our world.
How near the past is - a reminder that life goes on.
From there, we can walk around the town, taking in the other Roman sites and seeing how seamlessly they fit into our modern world, some of which will in turn be the historic sites of tomorrow.
Getting here
Details of opening hours of the National Archaeological Museum of Tarragona can be found here: https://www.mnat.cat/en/
Tarragona is just one hour south of Barcelona and can, at a push, be reached same day from London. For more details see here.