Miguel Guirao County Museum

About Miguel Guirao County Museum

The Museo Comarcal Velezano "Miguel Guirao" is the regional museum of Los Vélez, the mountainous north-eastern corner of Almería province. It occupies the Hospital Real on Carrera del Carmen in Vélez-Rubio, a building of 1765 that has served as a hospital for the poor, barracks, school, theatre and, until the 1960s, an asylum. Restored between 1988 and 1991, it also houses the tourist office.

The core of the collection was gathered from the 1950s by Professor Miguel Guirao Gea. His family donated it to the town in 1991. It holds several thousand pieces, mainly archaeological finds from sites in the south-east and especially Los Vélez, plus Saharan stone tools and ethnographic material. Displays run chronologically over several floors, from fossils and prehistory through Iberian, Roman and Islamic times and the medieval period to everyday rural life in Vélez.

Admission has been €1. It is closed on Mondays, opens on Tuesday to Saturday mornings and afternoons, and on Sunday mornings only; confirm current times with the tourist office.

Spring and autumn are the best seasons, when the surrounding Sierra María-Los Vélez Natural Park is good walking country. Come in the morning, when opening hours are longest, and leave time for the town's Baroque-to-Neoclassical church of La Encarnación.

Miguel Guirao County Museum in pictures

What you’ll find

• Museum exhibitionExhibition visitTicket
• Museum galleriesMuseum visitTicket
• Museum gift shopSouvenirsBuy
• Museum guideGuided tourBook
• Museum workshopWorkshops for childrenBook

Nearby places to visit

A short way to the north-west, the Castillo de Vélez-Blanco (5 km) is a Renaissance castle-palace built between 1506 and 1515 for the first Marquis of los Vélez on a crag above Vélez-Blanco. Everything else lies well to the south-east and is best treated as a separate day out. In Cuevas del Almanzora, the Castillo del Marqués de los Vélez (43 km) is a 16th-century castle and palace of the Fajardo family, now home to the town's archaeology and contemporary art museums. Near Pulpí, the Pulpí Geode (44 km) is a giant cavity lined with transparent gypsum crystals in an old mine, and Aguilón Golf (45 km) is a par-70 course where natural ravines cut across the holes.