Málaga, from Malaka to Picasso: Roman Theatre to Picasso's Birthplace: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Malaka to Picasso's birthplace
Málaga is a city of layers: Roman stones, a Moorish fortress, churches raised after the conquest of 1487 and the squares and streets of the 19th century, all within a short walk of one another.
The stops
This is the main surviving trace of Roman Malaca, a theatre of the Empire's first years that was built partly into the slope of the Alcazaba hill. It was found in 1951 while a garden was being laid out, and the first remains were mistaken for a gate of the city wall. After the theatre fell out of use in the 3rd century, a factory for salted fish and sauces such as garum worked on the site until the 5th century, and the visitor centre that opened in 2010 carries fragments of Roman Málaga's municipal law, the Lex Flavia Malacitana, on its outer walls.
Photo: Eloy Martín — CC BY-SA 3.0 es Charles III approved a new customs house for Málaga in 1787, as sea trade grew after commerce with America was freed, and work began in 1791. French troops sacked the unfinished building in 1810, and it was completed in 1829 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace, with arcaded lower floors around a central courtyard. Planned as a customs house, it later served as a royal tobacco factory and as government offices, and since December 2016 it has been home to the Museo de Málaga, with its fine arts and archaeology collections.
Photo: Tyk — CC BY-SA 3.0 Begun in the 11th century and modified or rebuilt up to the 14th, the Alcazaba is one of the best-preserved alcazabas in Spain, and a walled corridor links it to the Gibralfaro castle on the higher hill. The way in climbs through gates that double back on themselves, and the Gate of the Columns has two Roman columns reused from the nearby Roman theatre. When the city fell in August 1487, the cross and the banner of Castile were raised on its Torre del Homenaje.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 This was the home of a community of Cistercian nuns whose convent began in 1607, and the present building dates from 1878, after the earlier one was pulled down following the confiscations of 1836 to tidy up Calle Císter. The remains of Pedro de Mena, the sculptor who signed the contract for the cathedral's choir stalls in 1658, have rested here since 1996. Remains of the Roman baths of Malaca were found under the building during its restoration.
Photo: Tyk — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Gothic doorway of this church is thought to have been opened in 1498 at the foot of the old mosque's minaret, and it is the oldest work of the whole cathedral complex and a masterpiece of Isabelline Gothic. The church itself was raised between the 15th and 18th centuries, and it was one of four parishes the Catholic Monarchs set up in the city. A Roman altar with inscriptions, perhaps of the 3rd century, turned up beneath it in excavations in 2025.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 Built between 1528 and 1782 to plans by Diego de Siloe, the cathedral is Renaissance in style with a Baroque façade. Its south tower was never finished for lack of funds, which earned it the nickname La Manquita, the One-Armed Lady, while the 84-metre north tower is the second highest of any cathedral in Andalusia, after the Giralda. A plaque at the foot of the tower says the money went to help the American colonies win their independence, though the parish registers suggest it may have repaired the road to Antequera.
Photo: HervilleMelman — CC BY-SA 4.0 Calle Larios was inaugurated on 27 August 1891. A company formed in 1880 sold shares to pay for it, and the Larios family bought most of them and later took over the project, so the street carries the name of Manuel Domingo Larios y Larios, 2nd Marquess of Larios, whose statue by Mariano Benlliure stands at its south end. Most of its buildings were designed by the architect Eduardo Strachan Viana-Cárdenas, who was influenced by the architecture of Chicago, and it has been closed to traffic since 2002.
Photo: Pedro J Pacheco — CC BY-SA 4.0 This narrow passage opens off Plaza de la Constitución through the old gateway of a convent of barefoot Augustinian nuns, demolished in 1854, of which only the arch survives. A café-theatre named after a dramatic actor called Chinitas stood here from 1857 until it was shut in 1937 during the Civil War, and it grew into the most popular café-theatre in Spain, famed for its flamenco and visited by Federico García Lorca and Picasso, among others. It reopened on the same spot on 30 September 2024.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 This has been a major town square since the Reconquista. It was first called the Plaza de las Cuatro Calles, the square of the four streets, and later the Plaza Mayor, and it took its present name in 1812. The city hall stood here until 1869, and the square also held the mayor's house, the city jail and an Augustinian convent; since 2003 it has had the Fuente de Génova, a sixteenth-century marble fountain.
Photo: Américo Toledano — CC BY-SA 4.0 Augustinian friars bought this land, on what was then Calle de los Caballeros, in 1575. After the state took over the convent in 1843 the town council made it its seat, and in later years it was a seminary, a courthouse and a school. The church still holds public worship, and on the feast of Santa Rita of Cascia, 22 May, thousands of roses are blessed and handed out.
Photo: Simon from United Kingdom — CC BY 2.0 The museum opened on 17 October 2003 in the Buenavista Palace, which was built in the first half of the 16th century for Diego de Cazalla over the remains of a Nasrid palace. The idea of a Picasso museum in his home city was first discussed in 1953, but nothing came of it until the idea was rekindled in 1996. The excavations for the conversion uncovered a Phoenician city wall with towers, a Roman factory for garum fish sauce and the earlier Nasrid palace, and the basement can be seen from above through transparent panels in the floor.
Photo: Emilio Luque — CC BY-SA 4.0 After the Catholic Monarchs took Málaga in 1487 they set up four parish churches inside the old walls, and Santiago was the first of them. Its brick bell tower, with a star vault at its base and panels of sebka decoration outside, is a Mudéjar survivor of those early years, while the interior got its Baroque plasterwork in the 18th century. Pablo Picasso was baptised here on 10 November 1881.
Photo: Tajchman — CC BY-SA 3.0 es This has been an open public space since Roman times and a market square since at least the 15th century, and it takes its name from the Mercedarian friars who arrived in 1507 and built a church here. At its centre stands the monument to General José María Torrijos and 48 companions, shot on the orders of Ferdinand VII, whose remains lie in its base. A bronze Picasso sits on a bench taking notes with a pencil, leaving room for visitors to sit beside him, and the house where he was born is at number 15.
Photo: Hajotthu — CC BY-SA 3.0 Pablo Picasso was born on the second floor of this building in 1881. It dates from 1872, like the rest of the north side of the plaza, and it houses the Picasso Foundation, which the city created in 1988. It opened in full to the public on 22 June 1998, and among its treasures is a notebook of 84 preparatory drawings from 1907 for Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the only sketches of this kind in a Spanish collection.
Photo: Dominik — CC BY-SA 3.0
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