Museu Picasso

Based on works donated in 1963 by Picasso’s old friend and secretary Jaume Sabartés, Barcelona's wonderful Picasso museum on medieval Carrer Montcada offers a key look at the beginning and end of the career of the great 20th century master.

Picasso himself added to the collection — in spite of his refusal to have anything to do with Franco’s Spain, he always had a special place in his heart for the city of his youth. Try to arrive early; this is one of Barcelona's most popular museums and it fills up fast.

The collection starts way back with the drawings of an eight-year-old in Málaga; even at that age Pablo was so precocious that people believed he was a reincarnated grand master. At age 13 he was admitted to Barcelona's School of Fine Arts in the Llotja where his father taught; his first academic painting here, Science and Charity (1897), was painted at age 16 under pressure from his father to find himself a patron.