The Picasso Museum's hours:   Tuesday to Sundays (including holidays): 10 am to 8 pm. Closed Mondays and Jan.1, May 1, June 24, Dec. 25 and 26.

The Picasso Museum is surprisingly extensive, consisting of five palaces on Calle Montcada that have been beautifully restored and joined up to create an amazing space. 

Picasso lived in Barcelona in his youthful years, when he started out as an artist. He always wanted his museum to be in Barcelona. Jaume Sabartes was his secretary and he proposed the museum to the City Council in 1960. The museum opened in 1963, and included the personal collection of Sabartes and works of Picasso that at that time were in the Barcelona Museums of Art. In 1970 the artist donated about 2,500 paintings, engravings, and drawings to the museum. After Picasso died, his widow Jacqueline donated many other of his works to the museum.

The collection has many paintings from the Blue and Rose Periods. There is an exceptionally beautiful painting called The Harlequin. There are many portraits of his friends. Another highlight of the collection are the series called Las Meninas, which are the artist's many interpretations of the masterpiece of Velazquez that is in the Prado Museum. There are many ceramics that Picasso made that are also in the museum.

The exhibition itself requires quite some time to get around;  there's a lot to absorb and rushing can spoil it.  Allow at least four hours! If one wants to see Pablo's most famous paintings, one won't find them here (they're mostly in Paris and the U.S. and the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid), but here you'll see an extensive collection of his work from when he was a young teenager right up to his Rose Period.