Málaga has been rebuilt on itself for 2,800 years: Phoenician Malaka, Roman Malaca, Nasrid Mālaqa, then a 19th-century industrial city. This route follows the layers in order — theatre, castle, cathedral, cemetery, wine cellars and seafront pavilions.
Built under Augustus around 1 BCE, used until the 3rd century, then quarried by the Moors for the Alcazaba above it. Buried under a 1940s culture house and rediscovered in 1951. Free interpretation centre with garum jars.
Yusuf I of Granada raised these ramparts in the 14th century around an older Phoenician lighthouse enclosure. The wall circuit passes the powder magazine and a military museum recounting the three-month siege of 1487.
The neoclassical customs palace begun in 1791 holds some 15,000 archaeological pieces — Phoenician grave goods from the Cerro del Villar settlement, Roman mosaics lifted from villas at Cártama, and Nasrid ceramics.
Begun in 1528 on the footprint of the main mosque and never finished: money for the second tower went to the American colonies in 1782, leaving the 'one-armed lady'. Choir stalls carved by Pedro de Mena.
Consul William Mark opened Spain's first Protestant burial ground in 1831, ending the custom of burying foreigners upright in the sand at night. Graves include the writer Gerald Brenan and sailors of the frigate Gneisenau, wrecked in 1900.
The horseshoe marble gateway is the last fragment of the 14th-century Nasrid shipyards, which once opened directly onto the water. The iron hall around it dates from 1879; its stained glass shows the old shoreline before the port was filled.
Housed in the 1927 Tabacalera tobacco factory, the collection reads the 20th century through roughly 90 cars and couture — Belle Époque coachwork, pre-war Hispano-Suizas and Balenciaga dresses shown alongside them.
The obelisk holds General José María de Torrijos and 48 companions, shot on San Andrés beach in December 1831 after being lured ashore in a failed liberal rising against Ferdinand VII. The square served as the city market until 1868.
The Loring-Heredia industrialist family laid out this English-style estate in 1855 and filled its Doric temple with Roman finds from Cártama, including the bronze Lex Flavia Malacitana law tablets now held in Madrid.
Founded in 1487 where Ferdinand and Isabella camped during the siege of Málaga, rebuilt in baroque form around 1700. Below the altar lies the black-and-white funerary crypt of the Counts of Buenavista, lined with stucco skulls.
The 18th-century Palacio de Biedmas traces the Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel trade that bankrolled the city until phylloxera wiped out the vineyards after 1878. Admission covers two tastings and a room of lithographed export labels.
Opened in 1918 as a bathing club, this seafront pavilion under century-old ficus trees kept Málaga's bourgeoisie swimming through the Republic and the Civil War. The ruined jetty and original changing cabins still stand.