Picasso Museum

The Picasso Museum of Barcelona is the authoritative point of reference for the formative years of Pablo Ruiz Picasso. It opened to the public in 1963, and today is home to over 3,800 works (in the permanent collection) and the site of many educational programs and temporary exhibits. The Museum is located in what were once five antique Gothic palaces on Montcada Street in the city’s oldest quarter.

The Museum has been renovated and remodeled numerous times, and is now once again on the cusp of a new phase of expansion; one that will enable the Museum to host new programs and lead new initiatives, and to act as a public space for the study and appreciation of art, by promoting more direct interaction with visual arts, and incorporating greater spectator interaction. The Museum aspires to be a place for open dialogue, by organizing innovative lecture series, offering new perspectives on the early days of this world-renowned artist, and shining a new light on the collection in general.

Thanks to the eponymous artist’s own will, and that of his friend Jaume Sabartés, Barcelona is now home to the works of Picasso’s youth, including the complete series of Las Meninas, one of the most significant and best-known works of art of the 20th century. A museum with a present and a future very different from what it was expected in 1963, when it opened under the name Collection Sabartés and with the prohibition to mention the painter in the entry sign, due to Picasso's affiliation to the Communist Party and his strong opposition to Franco’s regime.