Малага

Málaga gave the twentieth century its painter and got its museums back with interest. Picasso was born on the Plaza de la Merced in 1881 — the birth house and the Museo Picasso, opened in the Buenavista palace with the family's blessing, anchor his return — and the city took the hint on a metropolitan scale: the Carmen Thyssen, the Pompidou's coloured cube on the port, the Russian Museum's outpost, and a soho of street art have made Málaga, within two decades, one of Europe's museum booms — the port city as gallery. Beneath the makeover the old strata hold: the Alcazaba and Gibralfaro on their hill above the Roman theatre, the one-armed cathedral ("la Manquita", its second tower never built), and the beaches where espetos of sardines smoke on boat-grills.

The musical establishment is documented in the concert record: the Teatro Cervantes — the ornate nineteenth-century house that is the city's principal stage — and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga, its resident symphony, carrying seasons that range from the pit to film-festival galas. August's feria turns the centre into daytime flamenco and the recinto into midnight; the biznaga's jasmine scent is the civic perfume. A native genius, a harbour of museums, sardines on firewood: Málaga's light was always paintable — now it's curated.