Presepio

 One of the discoveries of this past summer's trip to Portugal was the art museum in Lisbon.  Janet was in the middle of writing so I skived off to visit the museum. There I discovered presepios - that is, cribs or mangers - or maybe it's better to think of them as religious miniatures. They might have "lived" in churches, but you were apparently also just as likely to find them in private homes. They were closed up most of the time, but then you could open them up to explore the little world inside. As a child I would have been absolutely fixated on them.