Museo Provincial de Jaén
Home to the largest and most important collection of ancient Iberian sculpture on the planet, this provincial museum punches well above its weight for a mid-sized Andalusian city. Rows of enigmatic stone warriors and votive figures stare back at you from 2,500 years ago — it is genuinely jaw-dropping.
The Iberian Sculpture Galleries
The star of the show is the hoard of over 150 limestone ex-voto figures discovered at the Cerro de los Santos and, more famously, at the Sanctuary of Collado de los Jardines near Santa Elena. Warriors, priests and worshippers rendered in stiff, stylised stone feel almost Egyptian in their gravity.
A dedicated ground-floor hall presents the sculptures in chronological order with bilingual Spanish-English panels, making it easy to follow the arc from crude early carvings to the sophisticated, almost Greek-influenced pieces of the 4th century BC.
Roman and Fine Arts Collections
Upstairs, a suite of rooms covers the Roman occupation of Hispania Ulterior with mosaics, coins and funerary urns pulled from excavations across the province. The centrepiece is a beautifully preserved Roman mosaic floor from the nearby town of Martos.
The fine arts wing rounds things off with Baroque altarpieces, canvases by local Golden Age painters, and a small but choice selection of 20th-century Andalusian art. Allow at least two hours to do the whole building justice.
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