Spain Guide
Andalucía
Museo de Cádiz
Address: Plaza de Mina 5
Opening time: Tues 2.30–8.30pm, Wed– Sat 9am–8.30pm, Sun 9.30am–2.30pm
Price: €1.50, free with EU passport
The Museo de Cádiz incorporates the archeological museum on the ground floor with many important finds and artefacts from the city's lengthy history, including two remarkable fifth-century BC Phoenician carved sarcophagi in white marble (one male, the other female), unique to the western Mediterranean.
The Museo de Bellas Artes on the upper floor houses a quite exceptional series of saints painted by Francisco Zurbarán. With their sharply defined shadows and intense, introspective air, Zurbarán's saints are at once powerful and very Spanish – even the English figures such as Hugh of Lincoln, or the Carthusian John Houghton, martyred by Henry VIII when he refused to accept him as head of the English Church. Perhaps this is not surprising, for the artist spent much of his life travelling round the Carthusian monasteries of Spain and many of his saints are in fact portraits of the monks he met. Other important artists displayed here include Murillo, Rubens and Alonso Cano.