Most of the objects are small (some really tiny but with fantastic detail) so if you wear glasses take along those that will let you see the details properly (or even take along a small pair of binoculars!). There are usually several objects in one case, and you can walk around most of the cases.

It’s a pity the objects, and the printed descriptions below the cases, are not numbered so that you could quickly link one to the other. There’s a small audio/video guide available which might help, though those who were using it seemed to be spending more time looking at the a/v guide than the objects themselves!

Werner Herzog’s 2010 Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D film has a couple of showings each day in the downstairs lecture hall. If you plan to see the film after the exhibition allow yourself an hour and a half to two hours for the exhibition. The catalogues are available at the end of the exhibition (couldn’t see any on sale in the main bookshop). They're heavy hardbacks and it might be worth getting one sent mail-order before seeing the exhibition itself.

On a personal note, I’d say both the exhibition and the film are something of a revelation. The exhibition because it shows the exquisite delicacy and detail of the objects up close, and the film because it takes you to a place where you can imagine some of those objects (and paintings) being made. I came away thinking it (the human condition) is all about memory – the collective memory of our species and how we try to protect and preserve it. People 30,000 - 40,000 years ago were at the beginning of that memory and, as Herzog perceptively says at one point in his film, “We are locked in the past – they were not.”