Military Historical Museum of Seville — Attraction in Seville

Disappointment. Only for hardcore military enthusiasts. First, no backpacks, made me put it in a locker. No problem. Then they said I couldn’t bring in a phone. Really? Phone into locker. I pulled my notebook from my backpack (pen & paper). No notebooks allowed. I showed them there was nothing in it. No notebooks allowed. OK. Locker gets locked by attendant. I walk to security door. The guy sees my waistpack. Says it is not allowed. I show him there is nothing but my wallet and ID. They already have my phone. No, no waist pack, no wallet allowed. Only museum I recall that wouldn’t let me carry my wallet was in North Korea. Literally. One doesn’t like leaving their wallet and ID in a locker in a foreign country for obvious reasons. But fine. Museum first floor is mostly uniforms. Throughout museum larger placards are translated with proper English. However there is little narrative around tactical, operational, or strategic considerations for whatever they are talking about. The placards seldom get beyond: “A sword was designed to stab or slash the enemy." "Guns were designed to shoot people." "Cavalry used horses." "Rail moved people and supplies.” Captions for specific artifacts were 80% Spanish only; the 20% offering English were poorly written but mostly intelligible. For specific items of interest, I didn’t have my phone to use a translation tool or take a photo for future reference. I didn’t have my notebook to write down research topics for later. How stupid. Basement floor is firearms and other weaponry. Same language ratio for captions. For smaller firearms, country of origin is always cited. For larger weaponry and other artifacts, country of origin seems listed for any country that is not the United States. (e.g., early phones, vacuum tubes, military communications gear, range finders, TOW missile). I saw Franco’s name only once in a caption, and that indicates the degree to which this presentation touches modern history. Museum has decent artifacts, but the lack of narrative, consistent captioning, and skirting of discussion post-1936 makes it meaningful only to military enthusiasts who can independently extract value from this failure...

I am very angry with this Military Historical Museum: it's supposed to be open till 1400. We came in around 1200, and everyone was booted around 1320 after an announcement that the museum will be closing at 1330. This would be annoying enough by itself, but: we had already spent 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot we had only finished touring the 1st floor - and my friend (freshly booted from -1st floor) said that -1st floor blows the 1st out of the water. And the 1st floor already had a Spanish Enigma Machine, a Mosin-Nagant grenade launcher, a horse gasmask, and some kickass uniforms. we had gone to the naval history museum in San Fernando (Cadiz) yesterday, which wasn't just a great exhibit, but also had the friendliest English speaking staff, down to the director himself.

Additional criticism of the Military Historical Museum: The staff doesn't speak English No audio guide (unlike in San Fernando). There are English translations next to the exhibits, but the QR codes take you to PDF downloads in Spanish.

On the other hand, the entrance is free, so who's to say whether this place...

Main thing to note is that the Museum closes at 1400, as we discovered to our cost the day before. Don’t bring too much baggage, it all has to go in lockers. The staff are fantastic and they will look after you and it’s free!! So glad we came back as this place holds an amazing collection of Military hardware, including the biggest collection of Guns that I’ve ever seen so far. The uniform collection is a must as well as the early weapons: swords, daggers etc, but I have to say, the highlight for me were the stories of the various conflicts that Spain has been involved in over the last few centuries, (although, I’m intrigued to know as an outsider, why no mention of the 20th century civil war??) especially the Peninsular Wars of around 1812, between Spain and France. I didn’t know that England got involved on the Spanish side, and then, as I read this, a fellow English chap next to me explained how his great,great,great(?)Grandfather fought in that campaign…!! That’s what a great museum can do! It can draw the real stories out of people for them to share with others!!...