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Málaga is the capital of its province on the Costa del Sol and, with 592,346 people in 2024, the second largest city in Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. Its old core grew between Gibralfaro hill and the Guadalmedina river, facing the Mediterranean and its busy port.
With about 2,800 years of history it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, founded around 770 BC by Phoenicians from Tyre as Malaka. Carthage and then Rome followed, the Romans prospering from garum, and after Visigothic and Byzantine rule it was Islamic from the 8th century until the Castilian conquest of 1487.
Visitors climb to the Alcazaba and Gibralfaro Castle, pass the Roman theatre and see the Renaissance cathedral. Málaga is also Picasso's birthplace, with his museum, the Carmen Thyssen and the Centre Pompidou, and the Parque de Málaga, Muelle Uno and La Malagueta beach line the sea.
The Alcazaba of Málaga is a palatial fortress of Al-Andalus, begun in the 11th century and rebuilt several times up to the 14th, and one of the best preserved in Spain. A walled corridor links it to Gibralfaro Castle above, and the remains of a Roman theatre lie beside its entrance.
Gibralfaro Castle crowns Mount Gibralfaro, a hill 130 metres high above the city and the sea, fortified by Caliph Abd al-Rahman III in 929. Yusuf I of Granada enlarged it in the 14th century and built a double wall down to the Alcazaba, and its name is said to mean rock of the lighthouse.
The Roman Theatre of Málaga is the main surviving trace of Roman Malaka, built in the early years of the Empire at the foot of the Alcazaba hill. Its seating rests partly on the hillside, like a Greek theatre, and it keeps much of its tiers and an orchestra paved with large slabs of marble.
Málaga Cathedral is a Renaissance cathedral built between 1528 and 1782 to plans by Diego de Siloé, inside the line of the old Moorish walls. Its Baroque facade has three arches with marble columns, and medallions above the side doors show the patron saints of the city, Cyriacus and Paula.
The Museo Picasso Málaga opened in 2003 in the Buenavista Palace in the city where Pablo Picasso was born, with 285 works given by his family. Since a 2009 merger it also manages the collection of Paul, Christine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, and his birthplace on Plaza de la Merced is also a museum.
The Centre Pompidou Málaga, in the glass building called El Cubo, was the first branch of the Paris Centre Pompidou abroad, opened on 28 March 2015 by Mariano Rajoy and Fleur Pellerin. It shows works from the Paris collection in semi-permanent displays and drew 500,000 visits in three years.
The Carmen Thyssen Museum shows 19th-century Spanish painting, mostly Andalusian, from the collection of Carmen Cervera, fifth wife of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. It opened on 24 March 2011 in the 16th-century Palacio de Villalón, which was partly rebuilt for the museum.
The English Cemetery of Málaga, also called the Cemetery of St George, is the oldest non-Catholic Christian cemetery on mainland Spain. It was founded on the Vélez road by the British consul William Mark after a royal order of 1830, ending the burial of Protestants on the beach at night.
The Parque de Málaga, or Parque de la Alameda, runs from the Plaza de la Marina to La Malagueta on land won from the sea in the late 19th century. Its Mediterranean garden holds plants from all five continents, making it one of the most important public parks in Europe for exotic flora.
Muelle Uno is a pier in the port of Málaga that opened in November 2011 as an open-air shopping and dining promenade, part of a plan to join the port to the city. The quay itself was begun in 1588, and today it has a marina for superyachts and El Cubo of the Centre Pompidou.
La Malagueta Beach is the best known beach in the city, a stretch of dark sand about 1,200 metres long and 45 metres wide between the port and La Caleta beach. Close to the centre, it is busy all summer, with beach bars and a free open-air cinema in June, July and August.
Holy Week in Málaga is the city's commemoration of the Passion in the week before Easter, when 42 brotherhoods make 45 processions through the streets. They carry wooden sculptures of the Passion and images of the sorrowing Virgin, and it became a Fiesta of International Tourist Interest.
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