Spain in-depth: Tourist attractions

The best art museums in Spain

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The best art museums in Spain

Spain is one of the most visited countries in the world. It offers a great variety of scenery, monuments which may at first glance appear foreign to even central or northern Europeans, excellent gastronomy and many beaches and great weather This equation of tourist sights in Spain is completed with and lots of art. Today, many of the masterpieces can be enjoyed in Spain´s art museums spread all over the country and located not just in the top cities, but nearly everywhere. 

The Moorish influence from North Africa is unmistakable, especially, but not only, in the south. A native Spanish art developed under the influence of the Arabs and it was frequently blended with Romanesque and later with Gothic elements. Various architectural peculiarities emerged, and ornamentation was taken to degrees of extreme beauty. This also happened in paintings. Despite traits are shared with middle-European styles, there is certain luminosity and passion that distinguishes Spanish from, for example, Italian art.


If we look back at Spain’s Golden Age, culture thrived in Seville, Madrid, or Valladolid. This related not just to paint, but also literature and other domains of art. Religious subjects had a clear prominence. The church was the main patron of art and we should not forget that Spain had undergone seven centuries of reconquering process. Artists like Velazquez, El Greco or Ribera would alter the religious topics, bringing a new realism to the execution of their master pieces.


Painters like Picasso, Juan Gris or Dali, already in the XXth century, combined an astonishing inventiveness with even the macabre.

In this post we will share with you some of Spain´s most important art galleries. They cover all sorts of period and are allocated in many different cities and regions within Spain. 

bilbao fine arts museum

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum: Bilbao’s other amazing Museum

Bilbao Fine Arts Museum – Review  The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum (in Basque, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa) is located in the city of Bilbao in northern Spain. It is currently one of the main museums in the country, characterized by its chronological breadth, spanning from the thirteenth century to the present day, and for the great diversity of artistic styles it contains. During the last 100 years, a collaboration between civil society, local artists and public institutions has allowed the museum to gather an extensive collection, considered one of the most important and varied in Spain. Important bequests and

picasso museum malaga

Picasso Museum of Málaga: Amazing museum dedicated to Picasso in the heart of Málaga

Picasso Museum Málaga The Picasso Museum of Málaga is one of two Museums dedicated to Pablo Picasso in Spain. The other is located in the Catalonian city of Barcelona, in the famous Born neighborhood. Pablo Picasso was born in the Andalusian city of Málaga on October 25th, 1881, just a few meters from where his museum now stands. The museum is home to over 280 original pieces by Picasso that cover the different artistic periods of the painter’s career. The collection shows the different styles, materials, and techniques that Picasso experimented with while developing his unique style and vision.

Caves of Altamira in Cantabria

The Altamira caves are located in Santillana del Mar, a small town in Cantabria. These caves are one of Spain´s most important tourist attractions and receive every year over 250,000 visitors.  They are a Unesco heritage site. Santillana del Mar is known for 3 things. The first one are the caves of Altamira, the second thing is its beauty and the third one is kind of a joke since its name, it is widely said, contains 3 lies: It is not saint (Santi), it is not flat (llana) and it is not next to the sea (Mar). The Altamira

Royal Academy of San Fernando – Gallery and museum

This one of the finest art galleries in Spain. Since it competes with the the Prado, Thyssen and Reina Sofia, many people do not pay much attention to it, but it is worth a visit without hesitation. It does not normally show among the top attractions in Madrid, but this has probably got to do with the world-class reputation of the “Big” galleries in Madrid.  The academy is, above all, an academy with 56 members from different areas of arts. At the museum over 700 works are exhibited from a collection of over 1,500 . Among the most important

Santo Tome

Santo Tome, Conde Orgaz Burial in Toledo

Santo Tome, Conde Orgaz Burial in Toledo The church of Santo Tomas in Toledo dates from the 12C. It was rebuilt in the 14C at the behest of Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, Lord of Orgaz. The main chapel and the Mudéjar tower date from this time. In the Capilla de la Concepción hangs the famous El Greco painting The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586-8. Average customer review Score for Santo Tome, Conde Orgaz Burial Table of Contents The burial of Count Orgaz and the history behind the painting The burial depicted in the painting is that of

Guggenheim musem

Guggenheim musem- Bilbao

The Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao  The Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao is the city’s most emblematic monument. A visit to Bilbao wouldn’t be complete without at least strolling by and admiring it from the outside. This spectacular shimmering building on the bank of the Nervión river is itself a piece of art. Designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, the museum is considered one of the premier examples of contemporary architecture, and has been hailed as a “signal moment in the architectural culture”. Construction on the Museum began in 1991 when the Basque government offered to fund a Guggenheim museum with the intention

Museu Picasso

Picasso Museum in Barcelona – Visitor´s guide

 The Picasso museum in Barcelona is an indispensable art museum in Barcelona. The street where the Picasso museum is located is also very famous because of the large medieval palaces which were built here between the 13th and 15th Centuries in Barcelona and remodeled in the 18th Century. The street is in itself a tourist attraction and the museum, located inside 5 gothic palaces, boasts an impressive collection from Pablo Picasso within a fantastic piece of architecture in which a central courtyard provides by itself a good excuse to visit this museum.  Average customer review Score for Museu Picasso

Fundació Joan Miró

Fundació Joan Miró- Barcelona

Since 1973, the very modern building situated in the upper part of the Montjuïc Park has housed the Fundació Joan Miró. This museum is one of the most three visited of Barcelona and contains several pieces of Miró’s work, from paintings, sculptures, and drawings to ceramics and textiles. However, you can also contemplate the works of other artists as it is a very special exhibition of over 14.000 pieces. Average customer review Score for Fundació Joan Miró 9,1 What is the Fundación Joan Miró? The Joan Miró Foundation1 is a cultural institution in the city of Barcelona that houses

Museo Thyssen Bornemisza

Museo Thyssen Bornemisza- Madrid

Thyssen Bornemisza Museum – Visitor´s guide Located at the heart of the Paseo del Prado, almost in front of the Neptune Fountain, the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum shares the limelight with two of the other art museums in Madrid: the Prado Museum and the Reina Sofía museum. Since these three museums are located very close to each other, this area of Madrid has become popularly known as the Triangle of Art. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid gives its visitors a fantastic stroll through the history of art. With works from the XIII century until the end of the XXth century, the

Museo Reina Sofia

Reina Sofia museum

Rein Sofia museum – Picasso, Dali and so much more! The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia is one of the most important museums of Madrid. It offers the visitor an extensive collection of Spanish modern art pieces. Founded in 1992, the Reina Sofia Museum continues the periods that the Prado doesn’t, starting from 1881, the year of Pablo Picasso’s birth. This museum offers the visitor pieces of art from important Spanish painters such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. The most famous piece of the museum is the Guernica of Picasso, a piece of art

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