One minute you're admiring the collection of medieval Bruges pottery and the next you're checking long-forgotten by-laws on a computer. Before you know it the walls are closing in on top of you as Cromwell invades.
Waterford people are aware something very special is taking shape in the Granary, a once-derelict 19th-century building on the south quays. Many, however, are still not sure what to expect when a new permanent exhibition, Waterford Treasures at the Granary, opens in April.
The exhibition will feature historic and archaeological treasures collected in Waterford over the past 1,000 years. Creative use of technology and an imaginative design by London architects Ahrends Burton and Koralek, who were selected by international tender, will give the exhibition maximum appeal.
Currently the interior of the Granary looks and sounds like what it is, a building site, but with just over two months to go to the opening, Waterford Corporation's history adviser, Mr Eamonn McEneaney, and the acting assistant town clerk, Mr Paddy Power, say work is on schedule.
The £4.5 million centre has been six years in preparation and is set to make a significant contribution to the quality of life in the city.
The corporation hopes the centre will attract 100,000 visitors a year, a modest target considering that three times that number go to the visitor centre at Waterford Crystal, which has part-funded the new enterprise. A shuttle bus service will operate between the two sites.
While many of the Granary's visitors will be tourists and day-trippers, Mr McEneaney stresses the importance of making the centre a place for locals to enjoy, too.
A temporary exhibition gallery will be included, along with the two floors of permanent exhibits. The centre will also house a shop, an auditorium, an education facility, a restaurant and the information office of South East Tourism.
Also, some of the artefacts in the permanent exhibition will be rotated to give it an ongoing appeal to repeat visitors.
Local artists will be heavily featured in the temporary exhibition gallery.
"There will be national and international exhibitions as we can attract them, but we would like to see that when people come to Waterford they will get a flavour of Waterford that they're not going to get anywhere else," says Mr Power.
About half the money for the centre has been provided by Waterford Corporation, with substantial backing also coming from the EU and the Department of Tourism.
Many of the permanent exhibits will be on public view for the first time.
A centre-piece of the exhibition will be the 14-foot-long Great Charter Roll which, with its 16 colour illustrations, ranks as "a medieval masterpiece", says Mr McEneaney, presenting as it does an insight into both local politics and 14th-century fashion.
The Great Parchment Book, begun in 1361 and containing the earliest use for official purposes of the English language in Ireland, is brought to life in an audio-visual presentation which explores everyday life in medieval Waterford, covering details ranging from the closing time of the city gates to medieval planning and environmental controls.
Large-scale images of the kings and queens will be used, dominating the exhibition halls as they once dominated life in Waterford.
Inter-active computers will be used to help explain and interpret the exhibits.
Having begun by taking a glass-walled lift to the medieval exhibits on the top floor, the visitor descends through the building while moving forward in time.
The centre-piece of a gallery covering the Tudor and Stuart periods will be the Cap of Maintenance given to the mayor by King Henry VIII in 1536 and now regarded as the oldest Cap of Maintenance in western Europe.
An early glass furnace and a collection of Waterford glass from the 18th century will be displayed, while the regalia of a Waterford native, Thomas Francis Meagher, a hero of the American civil war, will dominate the 19th-century space.
As for this century, the corporation has, perhaps wisely, decided to leave the telling of that story to a future generation.
Visitors will, however, be encouraged to draw their own conclusions about 20th-century Waterford by finishing their visit with an audio-visual display described as "an atmospheric and evocative journey through Waterford's streets and lanes where the great events in the city's and sometimes the nation's history took place". The idea is to encourage the visitor to go out and discover the buildings that feature in the story they've just seen.
The Granary's whitewashed walls and big airy spaces provide an ideal atmosphere for the project, but almost as important to the corporation is the atmosphere they hope to create outside the building. The adjacent Hanover Street is, with the aid of cobblestones imported from Liverpool, being transformed into a "modernist town square".