Museo del Grabado Español Contemporáneo
The building that houses this museum was already four centuries old when the collection arrived. Hospital Bazán was founded in 1568 as a place of shelter for the poor, and its Renaissance stonework — irregular, layered, built by combining several separate structures — gives the two-floor gallery an unhurried, almost domestic scale that suits prints well.
The collection runs from 15th-century engravings to works by Picasso, Dalí, Miró and Tàpies, more than 4,000 pieces in total. For a museum tucked into the winding lanes of Marbella's Old Town, the depth of the holdings is quietly remarkable.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who return tend to time a visit around the temporary exhibitions, which rotate through national printmaking shows and are worth checking before you go. The admission is low enough that it barely registers as a decision. Give yourself time to linger on the upper floor, where the light and the scale of the space work together.
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Book directly at the providerHow Museo del Grabado Español Contemporáneo came to be
The museum opened on 28 November 1992, built around an initial donation of 1,350 graphic works by José Luis Morales y Marín, a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Morales, who became the museum's first director, gave further works in 1995 and again in 1998 — the year he died — bringing his personal contribution to 1,431 pieces. Subsequent donations have grown the collection past 4,000.
The building itself predates the museum by more than four centuries. Hospital Bazán was founded in 1568 by Álvaro de Bazán as a charitable hospital. Architects Roberto Barrios and Elisa Cepedano restored it for museum use in 1989, and in 2004 the site was declared a Monument of Cultural Interest.
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