The British Museum Curiosities (by Nicolás López Álvarez)

Despite the fact that during my journey through the British Museum I mostly listened to my own music, on certain occasions the speeches of the different tour guides that I found in my path managed to attract my attention to the point of making me silence the sound of my headphones for a few minutes. This is not due to the great variety of historical data that they commented on, but rather to those that they decided to omit, let me explain. The dynamics in terms of the local guides was almost always the same, a lot of information was explained about the different historical relics exhibited there, their year of creation, original use... however, most of them omitted the in-depth explanation about the way in which they had arrived in the United Kingdom, so far from their place of origin, which had not been in any case, a legal and much less understandable way (or at least in my view). The clearest example was the friezes of the Parthenon in Athens, where I spent a lot of time, since it is one of the works that I had been able to analyze in depth in class and that I was most amazed to see in person. These friezes were looted by the English in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, between approximately 1801 and 1805, perhaps hence the interest in omitting this information. However, what caught my attention the most was a guide that did rule on the origin of the friezes, stating that they would not exist today if they had not been taken to England because of the many torments that it had to endure. Parthenon during this time, held entirely advantageous since back in the 19th century the British had little or no knowledge of how they would spend the years in Athens. I do not blame the guides in any way, I suppose that they will have explanation patterns to follow, nor do I think that England is the only country that tries to tell the story by omitting some information, indeed, it is likely that most of the countries do so , sadly. As a final note I want to mention a couple of guides who I came across that were quite rigorous according to what I know, one Italian and one English, who were quite critical. In the case of Italian I did not trust one hundred percent since my Italian is not brilliant, let's say, in the case of English, I had no doubt. So as a conclusion, the story adapts to the taste of those who tell it and we should not settle for what we hear, but investigate ourselves.