We’ve recently talked about museums that are available in Malaga for free every Sunday. We’ve also suggested a route so that you could see them all in just one day. Today we want to mention three more places that you can also visit without fees, but which are located a little bit further from the center.

Russian Museum - Museo Ruso

www.coleccionmuseoruso.es

It is less than 4 km from the city center and is located exactly in the same place as The Automobile and Fashion Museum. Every Sunday from 4:00 PM till 8:30 PM we have the opportunity to admire its collections free of charge, on other days we will pay from 4 € to 8 € for a normal ticket and from 2.5 € to 4 € for a reduced one, depending on whether we want to see a permanent or temporary exhibition or both.

The museum is a branch of the Russian State Museum, which is located in St. Petersburg and is situated in Malaga in the building of the former Royal Tobacco Factory. It was inaugurated in 2015 and it was the first European branch of this institution. We can find here a collection of works from various periods and genres of Russian art - from icons, through portraits, landscapes, scenes from everyday life to avant-garde, socialist realism, decorative and applied art and clothes. As for my subjective assessment, this is definitely not my favorite museum, painting did not impress me much and I rather will not become a fan of Russian art (but I came to the conclusion that Russian women probably are not as beautiful as I thought they were because, very euphemistically speaking, all tsarinas on porters looked downright awful! Have a look at the photo on the right). I liked the photography exhibition and the temporary of Nikolái Roerich’s painting.

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Museo Automovilistico y de la Moda - The Automobile and Fashion Museum

https://www.museoautomovilmalaga.com/

It is located next door, in the same "yard" as the Russian Museum. On their website they boast that they are number one in Trip Advisor in "Things to do in Málaga". Because of the pandemic, it is closed and is due to reopen on 29 June. Until now, every Monday between 2 PM and 4 PM it could be visited for free. Hopefully it will stay that way but before planning your visit, please remember to check the opening hours and prices on their website.

What is this museum? Why automobiles and fashion? And is it really worth visiting? I, even after the visit, wondered where such a connection came from but found the answer to my question on the official website of the museum. We can read there that "automobiles have always been the social symbol that reflects the evolution of fashion through every period of time. The Automobile and Fashion Museum shows how artistic tendencies have evolved due to automobile stylists such as Ettore Bugatti, Gordon Buehrig, Giuseppe Figoni, Firestone or Labourdette.". All right, I don’t want to overthink the idea of this institution so long story short - the museum is very interesting, it's worth visiting and it’s really pleasant to watch amazing models of cars, engines or dresses and hats - some of them you will find in the pictures below.

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Museo Aeronáutico - Aeronautical Museum

http://www.aeroplaza.org/

The aeronautical museum is located at the airport. It's always free (normally open on Tuesdays from 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM and from Wednesday to Saturday from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM) but is able to operate only thanks to volunteers and donations from visitors, so if you like it, you can support them financially with a donation.

The museum consists of several buildings of the former (first) terminal of the airport in Málaga (Aeropuerto de Málaga-Costa del Sol). It was built in 1949 and reopened as a museum in 2009. At the museum, we can go back in time and see how was it to travel by plane in the 1950s and in the following decades of the twentieth century, we can climb the control tower or go out to the terrace and watch planes taking off and landing. We can see how the personnel’s uniforms have evolved, understand how the airport itself works and get on board different planes. There is also an interactive room with a series of exhibitions and experiments, thanks to which you can understand better the secrets of aviation. Personally, the "Women in aviation" exhibition impressed me the most form the entire museum. And I am not talking about the aesthetic because it’s just a few posters in a bit messy and dirty room, but it's nice to read about such ladies as Mae C. Jemison (the first African American to fly into space), Amelia Earhart (in 1923 she obtained a pilot's license and disappeared in the Pacific Ocean while trying to fly around the globe along the equator), Raymonde de Laroche (the first woman in the world who obtained a pilot license in 1910) or E. Lilian Todd (who was the first woman to design her own aircraft in 1906)

In 2018, the 100th anniversary of commercial aviation was celebrated - exactly one century earlier, on Christmas December 25, 1918, the first Latécoère plane landed in Barcelona, beginning the air mail era! In the museum we can see posters advertising, a little younger connection, Toulouse (France) - Casablanca (Morocco) with stops in several cities on the Mediterranean, including Malaga and Alicante. The flight, with stopovers, lasted several hours!

You can find all these interesting facts (and much more) in the Aeronautics Museum, which I truly recommend. 

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Remember before you go to Malaga read the article about the city's history and about the places you should visit in the area.