Picasso Museum

The first museum dedicated to Pablo Picasso anywhere in the world opened right here on March 9, 1963 — and it almost didn't happen. Picasso despised Franco's regime and had vowed never to return to Spain while the dictator ruled. The idea came from Jaume Sabartes, Picasso's lifelong friend and personal secretary, who wanted to create a permanent home for the collection. When Sabartes proposed Paris, Picasso insisted on Barcelona — the city where he'd spent his formative years and held his first exhibition at seventeen.

The museum opened under the deliberately low-key name "Sabartes Collection" to avoid provoking Franco's government. Barcelona's mayor, Josep Porcioles, went against Madrid's wishes to approve the museum. The gamble paid off — and after Sabartes died in 1968, Picasso donated his complete Las Meninas series, 58 paintings reinterpreting Velazquez's masterpiece, as a memorial to his friend.

The collection is housed in five adjoining medieval palaces on Carrer de Montcada, one of Barcelona's most architecturally significant streets. These thirteenth-to-fifteenth-century mansions were once home to the city's merchant aristocracy, and walking through their interconnected courtyards and staircases is an experience in itself. The museum holds over 4,250 works, making it the most comprehensive collection of Picasso's early period anywhere in the world.

What makes this museum different from Picasso collections in Paris or Malaga is its focus on the young artist. You can trace his development from childhood sketches and school notebooks through his Blue Period works and the experimental paintings he made during his Barcelona years. The museum owns two of his first major works: "The First Communion" from 1896 and "Science and Charity" from 1897, painted when he was just fifteen and sixteen years old.