Malaga is one of the most visited cities of Spain. Here we find beautiful beaches, good temperatures, a rich heritage, first-class gastronomy and some of the most touristic coastal towns in Europe such as Marbella, Nerja or Benalmádena, are really nearby. Reality is that Malaga is much more than sun and beaches. For more than a decade the city has made a strong commitment to become a cultural reference and today we can say that it has already achieved it – the city is home to more than a dozen first-rate museums, and in half the world it is considered a top cultural destination. Would you like to discover the best cultural places of Malaga? For your next visit, you should include the following 5 museums.

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Picasso Museum and the Natal House Museum

A vacation in Malaga can not be considered complete without a visit to the Picasso Museum. Located in the Palacio de Buenavista, the collection houses some of the most outstanding works of this genius who lived in this Andalusian city until 1891. In the permanent exhibition are more than 200 samples of his particular art, which include works from the late nineteenth century to 1972. The collection is divided into eleven rooms where visitors can contemplate the evolution of the artist in the professional and personal field, as well as their peculiar techniques and creations. Some of the works that can be found here are ‘Acrobat’, ‘Insect’, ‘Mother and child’ or ‘Woman with raised arms’, among many others.

The Buenavista Palace is located on San Agustín street in Málaga, very close to the Plaza de la Merced where you can find another place related to the painter: the Casa Natal Museum of Picasso. Today the building has been declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument and, although the museum used to occupy only a part of it, it is now distributed throughout the entire block. If you are going to visit the Picasso Museum, we encourage you to complete the tour by visiting also his native home located less than 5 minutes on foot from the Buenavista Palace.

Pompidou Centre

In one of the most touristic and popular areas of Malaga, Muelle Uno, we’ll find another important museum of Malaga: Centro Pompidou (Pomidou Centre). Surely its name reminds you of the famous cultural area of Paris, and indeed, the centre of Malaga is the first franchise of the French institution outside the hexagon. Inside there are some of the works that came to the Andalusian city after being exhibited in the French capital.

The tour has five different themes: ‘Metamorphosis’, ‘The body in pieces’, ‘The body politic’, ‘Self-portraits’ and ‘The man without a face’. What kind of works can be seen inside? As it is a contemporary museum, the collection covers all types of pieces belonging to the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Among the artists who give life to the different exhibitions are Joan Miró, Frida Kahlo, Marc Chagall and how could it be otherwise, Pablo Picasso. These collections are always exhibited permanently and are combined with two or three itinerant exhibitions throughout the year about other very varied themes ranging from architecture to industrial design and photography. The attractive and modern appearance of the exterior of the building will encourage you to get to know the extensive and interesting collection that this museum has, also, as we said, it is located in one of the most popular areas according to the people of Malaga and therefore mandatory visit.

Museum of Málaga

If you are interested in history and archeology, at the Museum of Malaga you can visit one of the most important cultural spaces in the country. In this museum, the Archaeological Museum and of Beautiful Arts are located, with more than two thousand works from the fifteenth century until today. You can access it in the recently renovated Palacio de la Aduana, the most important civil building in the capital and located in the heart of the Andalusian town, behind the Paseo del Parque.

One of the most outstanding sections of this visit is related to the collection of archeology, which is divided into seven areas differentiated by theme. The tour includes pieces of high value such as the medieval woods of the Alcazaba or the lytic collections of Nerja, among others. Many of the latest acquisitions of the museum come from the interventions that have been made in the centre of Malaga, in recent decades. Regarding the painting section, you can find important works by artists such as Murillo or Luis de Morales.

Museum of Carmen Thyssen

Another great museum that opened its headquarters in Malaga is the personal collection of Baroness Carmen Thyssen. The largest private collection of art in the country has chosen Malaga as a starting point to expand beyond Madrid. It is located in the palace of Villalón (between Calle Compañía and Calle Mártires), one of the main exponents of the Renaissance architecture of Malaga, built in the sixteenth century.

The collection consists of 285 pictorial pieces from the Carmen Thysen Collection, and they focus exclusively on 19th-century Spanish painting. The exhibition is divided into four sections: “Ancient Masters”, which serves as an introduction and highlights works by Zurbarán and Ezquerra; “Romantic Landscape and Costumbrismo”, with as most important the masterpieces of Genaro Pérez Villaamil or José García Ramos; “Preciousness and Landscape Naturalist”, with works by Fortuny, Benlliure or Madrazo and the section called “End of Century”, with pictures of Spanish artists of international stature as the Valencian Sorolla, Ignacio Zuloaga or Julio Romero de Torres.

Collection of the Russian Museum of Saint Petersburg

The last major international franchise settled in Malaga is the Russian State Museum, from St. Petersburg. The collection has been installed in a section of what used to be the old Royal Tobacco Factory, an industrial style building from the 20s of the last century, occupying 2,3000 square meters of the total surface area of the complex and forming part of the cultural projects. It is important to know that the museum does not have any permanent exhibitions, but is nourished by the different loans of matrix yields in the form of itinerant exhibitions. This model of museum organisation makes the exhibitions last less but the pieces rotate more, so it is possible to see a greater number of works in the same space over the same year. Among the artists exhibited since its inauguration in March 2015, include Kandisky, Andrei Rubliev and Russian academicians of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Are you ready to immerse yourself in this sea of museums? Are you clear which one you are going to start with during your next visit to Malaga? Do not hesitate and prepare your bags, Malaga, the city of museums is waiting for you!