Museos Municipales de Estepona

Great place! We came with our family on Sunday, free admission! Considering that on Sundays almost everything around is closed, this is a great opportunity to immerse yourself in the topic of archeology and the history of Carida, since in the next room there is a museum related to this legendary topic in the history of Spain! We really liked it!

The most bizarre experience of our holiday. Speaking to the guy at the gate for five minutes of him speaking Spanish and us trying to speak English to him..... It turns out he's English and acted like he didn't know we were English... Anyway, interesting little free museum but just a very strange interaction. Our boys found it very interesting seeing a bull ring and the pictures and dinosaurs. A very random but good little place

Fairly basic museum, most dinosaur skeletons are replicas of ones found in Argentina. Top floor has agricultural machinery and other artefacts. Bull ring itself is valid, but can see how they performed. Free entry, but donotation requested. Max time is 1 hour.

Pretty interesting little place, situated within the bull room complex you will find an array of fossils, butterflies and even some dinosaur skeletons, there’s is also a second museo upstairs where they have some interesting film, fishing and farm exhibits on display, it’s all free and will keep the kids entertained for an hour or two, there is also free parking close by.

Been there during the working hours and the lock was on the door. A guy was at the balcony and when he saw people coming to the museum he disappeared. There was a local family wanting to visit as well and they even tried to call the number on the timetable on the door without success. ¡¡¡¡Siesta fiesta!!!! Ps: a homeless man had his mattress on the other entrance to the museum. They really go the extra mile to get rid of the tourists.

Quaint little museum. Very helpful staff that speaks English..

An excellent little museum, a real gem. Some small-town museums are not very good, but this is great. And even better since the ground floor revamping in Spring 2021. If you wonder if it will interest children, I can tell you that my visits are under conditions that you are unlikely to replicate: accompanied by 110 Primary school children, who were thrilled by the museum's exhibits It is underneath the main seating in the Bull-Ring, opposite the Marina. Just walk around the outside of the ring until you come to a little archway that says "Museos Municipales" It's free, but not suitable for wheelchair users above the ground floor. There is no drinks or snacks machine - take your own bottles of water Firstly the Bullfighting museum. On the right as you enter, and at the start there is a low wall on your left. Peer over it and you'll see the passageway through which they release the bulls into the ring when there are bullfights on. Not very often, and never during museum opening hours! On either side of the passageway are the "cells" in which the bulls are kept prior to being released into the ring Also in the entrance to the Bullfighting museum, on the floor, are what seem to be square wooden manhole covers. Take off a lid and have a look: there's a grille covering a peephole down into one of the cells The museum itself is made up of souvenirs of famous bullfighters and famous bulls. The shirts and jackets of the former, the heads of the latter. It is interesting to see up close the fancywork on the jackets - embroidery and sparkle. They are called Trajes de Luces - Suits of Light - because of the way that the sun catches the sequins. Just imagine what these jackets cost! Unless they come from a family with a long bullfighting tradition and thus wealth, these young men are from modest origins. How could they afford them? Either now or at the end you can ask the very helpful staff to let you go into the ring - la plaza - and sit on the stepped seats and get a real feel for what a bull ring is like inside, without any of the bloodthirsty bits Then the Palaeontological section, which basically means fossils and dinosaurs. The fossils are local, the dinosaurs replicas of some bones dug up in Argentina, but no accompanying child is going to object to that! Quite some time can be spent here, as this is the section that is most obviously of interest to children. There are also some butterfly cases here; not sure why - they had to put them somewhere Then upstairs to the Ethnological museum. Estepona lived, in the past, on The Land and The Sea. Nowadays you add Tourism to that, of course. This museum shows us what were the everyday objects used in these two professions. So here we have sections devoted to the past. Not the distant past - some of the things displayed here were used in my youth! There is a section on farming in the twentieth century, with all sorts of weird and wonderful articles. I particularly like the farm-cart which is decorated with . . . a picture of an early motor tractor! To own such a machine would have been a dream to the modest farmer who had a donkey to pull his cart. Then there is the fishing section, with a whole boat. Estepona used to have 4 or 5 fish-canning and salting factories, one near the port on the Paseo Maritimo, the other where the big Carrefour Hypermarket is at the other end of the town. I know women in their early seventies who worked 18- 20 years in one of these. Assuming they began aged 13 or 14 (normal age), the factories were still going strong 40 years ago. Nowadays the fish is packed in ice and put into enormous refrigerated lorries and rushed off to the wholesale markets. Or bought by local shops and restaurants for our delight, of course. There's also the household section. Just look at the size of some of the bottles, jars, bowls. You could cook and serve a whole five-year-old child in some of the dishes! Masses to keep you occupied. Well worth a visit If I can say that I much enjoy my visits even when accompanied by 110 kids, then I am sure that you will too.

Sweet, small and free. If you or your children are into dinos and fossils it makes for a nice visit.