Museo Picasso Málaga (Picasso Museum), Malaga (must see)

The Picasso Museum is rooted directly in the city where Pablo Picasso was born in 1881 and occupies the Buenavista Palace, a 16th-century aristocratic residence in Málaga’s historic centre.
Picasso’s father, José Ruiz, served as curator of Málaga’s city museum, which operated under tight budgets and was rarely open to the public. As part of his compensation, Ruiz was granted exclusive use of a room as an art studio, where the young Pablo made his earliest sketches under his father’s guidance. Although Picasso would later be represented by major museums in Paris and Barcelona, the Málaga museum holds particular significance: it stands only a short walk from Merced Square, where he was born.

The idea of establishing a Picasso museum in Málaga circulated for decades before becoming a reality in the early 21st century, driven by the artist’s family. The museum opened in 2003, following a substantial donation of works from Christine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, with the official inauguration attended by the King and Queen of Spain.

Rather than concentrating on a single period, the collection traces Picasso’s artistic evolution across his entire career. Typically organised chronologically across 11 galleries, it begins with Picasso’s early academic works, led by the 1895 painting Portrait of a Bearded Man. The rooms dedicated to his Neoclassical period contain one of the museum’s crown jewels—the 1923 painting The Three Graces. Toward the end of the circuit, visitors encounter Picasso’s works from the 1970s, which are noticeably more colourful and expressive. Temporary exhibitions regularly place the artist’s work in dialogue with other creators and themes.

Beneath the palace lie archaeological remains, including partially preserved structures from a Nasrid palace alongside earlier Roman traces. Visitors can walk on glass walkways over 2,500-year-old city walls and the remains of a Roman fish-salting factory. One of the main highlights of the basement level is the Phoenician wall dating from the 7th and 8th centuries BC. The archaeological site is accessible via staircases or an elevator.

The institution also houses an archive of documents and photographs, as well as a specialised library containing more than 14,000 titles devoted to Picasso.