Malaga is a Spanish city, which belongs to the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is located at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea and in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, about 100 km east of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Its municipal district occupies an area of 395 km2 that extends over the mountains of Malaga and the Guadalhorce Valley. The city is located in the center of a bay surrounded by mountainous systems. Two rivers, the Guadalmedina and the Guadalhorce, cross it and flow into the Mediterranean.

Malaga is the sixth largest city in Spain by population. In addition, it is the most densely populated urban area of the conurbation formed by the group of localities that are located along 160 km of the Costa del Sol and the center of a metropolitan area that exceeds its municipal limits covering other 12 municipalities that add up to 987,813 registered inhabitants, although it is estimated that in Malaga Capital and its metropolitan area live more than 1 million people.

During the 19th century the city experienced a remarkable industrial and revolutionary activity that made it the first industrial city in Spain. Scenario of one of the bloodiest episodes of the Spanish Civil War and protagonist of the explosion of the tourist boom in the 1960s and 1970s, Malaga is now a remarkable economic and cultural center, and an important communication node on the Mediterranean coast

The climate of Malaga is subtropical-Mediterranean. The average annual temperature is 18 °C, with an average maximum of 25.4 °C in August and an average minimum of 11.9 °C in January. Summers are hot, usually humid except when the terrestrial wind blows, a dry wind from the interior that triggers the temperatures.

Rainfall is concentrated in short periods of the year. The average humidity is 66%, with 43 days of rain per year, concentrated in the coldest months. There are 2,815 hours of sunshine per year. In 2007, Malaga was the second sunniest city in Spain, with 3,059 hours of sunshine, according to the data available to the National Institute of Statistics, collected in its statistical yearbook.

The coast of the municipality of Malaga has 16 beaches of different nature. They are low semi-urban beaches with dark sand.

In the urban area itself and to the west of the port are the beaches of La Misericordia, San Andrés and Huelin. They are extensive beaches with a high degree of occupation. On the other side of the port are the most popular beaches: La Malagueta and La Caleta. Further east are the Baños del Carmen and the beaches of Pedregalejo, El Palo and El Candado. These are urban beaches bounded by U-shaped dikes and fine sand. Finally, atthe eastern end are the semi-urban beaches of La Araña and Peñón del Cuervo, which are steep in character, with coves and small rocky cliffs.

Malaga has been declared a Historic Site since few cities in the world have such a wide overlap of traces of the passage of civilizations over the centuries, both from the East and the West, in such a reduced urban space. Phoenician, Punic, Roman and Arab remains, etc., turn the city center into an authentic historical palimpsest in which monuments such as the Roman Theatre, the Alcazaba, the Cathedral, the Customs House, the Jewish Quarter and a rich archaeological heritage coexist.

The Malaga Park, known simply as the Parque, is a subtropical botanical garden parallel to the port, between the Plaza de la Marina and the Plaza de Toros de La Malagueta. It contains plant specimens from the five continents and naturally adapted to Malaga, constituting a botanical rarity in Europe. The park is flanked by monumental buildings, such as the Town Hall, the headquarters of the Bank of Spain, the Rectorate of the University, the former Casa del Jardinero Mayor and the Palacio de la Aduana, an 18th century neoclassical palace that houses the Museum of Fine Arts.

The Alameda Principal, has several points of interest such as the tavern Antigua Casa de Guardia, an establishment with a century and a half of history where the typical Malaga wines are served.

The street Marqués de Larios, communicates with the Plaza de la Constitución and with the Port of Málaga. In it you will be able to find all type of businesses.

The city is also known for being the birthplace of the famous painter Pablo Ruiz Picasso and has two spaces dedicated to the artist in the historical center: Picasso's Birthplace, located in the Plaza de la Merced, which houses the foundation of the same name and where objects from his childhood are kept, and one of the three most important museums about the artist, the Picasso Málaga Museum.

Between the Plaza de la Merced and the Plaza de la Aduana is the street Alcazabilla. A route by this street is a trip by the last 3,000 years of the history of the city, since it concentrates in his 250 meters the Palace of the Customs, the access to the Alcazaba, the Roman Theater that can be contemplated in its totality from a balcony viewpoint, part of the Jewry of the city and the wooded garden of the back of the Museum Picasso, in the Renaissance Palace of the Counts of Buenavista, whose basement contains rest of the old Phoenician wall of the city.

The city has numerous museums, but it is the art galleries that it hosts that make Malaga one of the European cities with the highest concentration of relevant art centers by number of inhabitants

Museo Picasso Málaga

The Malaga Picasso Museum located in the Renaissance Palace of the Counts of Buenavista, has 276 works that cover the eight decades of creation of the Malaga genius Pablo Picasso, as well as an ambitious program of temporary exhibitions.

Centro Pompidou Málaga

The Pompidou Center in Malaga, located in the building called The Cube and managed by the National Center of Art and Culture Georges Pompidou, whose opening is scheduled for 2015, has in its collection works by Frida Khalo, Picasso, Bacon, Magritte, Leger, Max Ernst, de Chirico, Giacometti, Brancusi, Marc Chagall, Julio González, Joan Miró or Antoni Tápies, among others.

CAC Málaga

The CAC is the most visited museum in Andalusia. Conceived according to the German Kunsthaus model, it exhibits plastic and visual arts from the last third of the 20th century. It consists of six thousand square meters of surface, of which two thousand four hundred are dedicated to exhibitions. The Carmen Riera collection, with authors such as Andy Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat, Juan Muñoz, Anish Kapoor and Louise Bourgeois, forms part of its exhibition catalog on loan. Among the temporary exhibitions that have already taken place, great figures of the international scene have stood out,such as Louise Bourgeois, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gerhard Richter, Paul McCarthy, Anish Kapoor, Jason Rhoades, Raymond Pettibon, Ron Mueck, Rachel Whiteread, Yoshitomo Nara, Roni Horn, Daniel Richter, Rodney Graham or Marina Abramovic.

Museo Carmen Thyssen

This museum, located in the 16th century Palacio de Villalón, has 267 works from the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection and exhibits a complete tour of 19th century Spanish painting, complemented by a careful program of temporary exhibitions. The collection includes works by Zurbarán, Mariano Fortuny, Raimundo de Madrazo, Martín Rico, Sánchez Perrier, Joaquín Sorolla, Aureliano de Beruete, Darío de Regoyos, Ramón Casas, José Gutiérrez Solana, Ignacio Zuloaga and Julio Romero de Torres, among others.

Museo Estatal Ruso de Málaga

Located in the old Royal Tobacco Factory in Malaga and scheduled to open in 2015, it is a sub-venue of the centenary Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg. The exhibition speech includes from the icons of Byzantine inspiration to the socialist realism of the Soviet era. Some of the artists who are part of the collection selected for Malaga are Isaac Levitan, Olga Rozanova, Alexander Rodchenko, Vasili Kandinski or Valentin Serov.

Museo de la Aduana

The Museum of Malaga is the fusion of the Museum of Fine Arts of Malaga, founded in 1913, with the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Malaga, from 1947, and is located in the Palacio de la Aduana. It houses an extensive catalog, with one of the largest collections of paintings in Spain, which exceeds two thousand titles, which highlights the collection of paintings from the nineteenth century, as well as various archaeological collections ranging from prehistory to the Muslim period, in addition to a valuable set of busts, sculptures and Roman funerary pieces, among other effects, with a total of more than 15,000 references. Its Fine Arts section includes canvases and sculptures by artists such as Luis de Morales, Luca Giordano, Murillo, Alonso Cano, Ribera, Velázquez, Goya, Pedro de Mena, Zurbarán, Sorolla, Federico Madrazo and Ramón Casas, as well as several of the most famous members of the so-called Malaga School of Painting - Moreno Carbonero, Enrique Simonet, Muñoz Degrain, José Nogales and Bernardo Ferrándiz.

La Fundación Picasso Museo Casa Natal

It is another exhibition space dedicated to Pablo Picasso. In the Plaza de La Merced, in the building where Picasso was born and lived his childhood, it treasures childhood and family memories of the painter as well as Picasso's work and that of José Ruiz Blasco, his father, painter and teacher at the School of Fine Arts in Malaga; also outstanding art collections specialized in Pablo Picasso's graphic work, drawing and ceramics, as well as a documentation center, with a library specialized in the life and work of the artist.

El Museo del Patrimonio Municipal

It brings together some 4,000 pieces of sculpture, painting, graphic work and documentation of historical value, which show the history of the city.183 Also of historical and ethnographic content is the Museum of Popular Arts and Customs, founded in 1976 by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Telmo, which portrays the way of life of Malaga's people in the past and present.

On science and technology there are several museums in the city: The Alborania Museum, created in 1989 with the aim of promoting the richness of the Alboran Sea; the National Museum of Airports and Air Transport, with a collection related to aviation and airports, historical aircraft on display, historical airline advertising, etc.; the Principia Science Center, an educational center that displays more than sixty interactive modules and has a planetarium and astronomical observatory; or the Automobile Museum that displays more than 90 vehicles as well as engines belonging to the Portuguese collector João Manuel Magalhaes.

In addition, there are a series of thematic museums such as the Interactive Music Museum, with a collection of musical instruments; the Dollhouse Museum, with miniatures; the Glass and Crystal Museum, the Wine Museum or the Flamenco Museum, with a collection of guitars and historical documents on this song.

Malaga's cuisine is a compendium of all the gastronomy of the province and is part of the Mediterranean diet. The Espetos de Sardinas, the anchovies, both fried and in vinegar, and the fried pescaíto made with anchovies, horse mackerel, red mullet, octopus or squid, are the most typical dishes, but we must also mention the noodle casserole, gazpacho, gazpachuelo, migas, Malaga salad, ajoblanco and porra antequerana, among others. Malaga is known for its sweet wines that have been produced since ancient times. These wines are protected under the Denominación de Origen Málaga y Sierras de Málaga.