Descalzas Convent Museum

On Plaza de las Descalzas, the convent of San José of the Discalced Carmelite nuns shows the heritage the community has gathered over centuries: sculpture, painting and silverwork spread across the church and the rooms on the upper floor. It is a small, very dense museum, the kind you walk round slowly, and one of the richest collections of sacred art in Antequera.

What you will see

The visit starts in the church, a jewel of Antequera Baroque, with a high altarpiece attributed to Francisco Primo and presided over by a 17th-century St Joseph. From the sacristy, where two portraits of churchmen from the Indies and a Velázquez-style mirror hang, a staircase leads up to the rooms.

In the Tribune Room there is a bust of a Sorrowing Virgin by Pedro de Mena, a St Michael by the Neapolitan Giuseppe Sarno and canvases from the workshop of Antonio Mohedano. The Nicola Fumo Room holds the Immaculate Conception and the St Joseph this Neapolitan sculptor made in 1705, two canvases by the Mexican Antonio de Torres and, in a display case, the Foundress's Monstrance of 1654 and a reliquary with an autograph letter from St Teresa dated 1577.

The Nativity Room takes its name from the Descalzas' Nativity scene, which sets the mystery in a backdrop of Antequera's own acropolis, with the Alcazaba above; the figures are by Caspicara of Quito. In the St Teresa Room a canvas by Luca Giordano takes pride of place, beside the Virgin of Solitude, known as the Priorísima, by Antonio del Castillo (1692). The tour ends in the upper gallery of the little cloister, with 18th- and 19th-century Infant Jesus figures in wooden display cases.

Opening hours and admission

It is open Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 to 14:00 and from 17:00 to 19:00, on Saturdays from 9:00 to 12:30 and from 17:00 to 19:00 and on Sundays from 9:00 to 12:30. It is closed on Mondays. Admission costs €5. Published guides do not entirely agree on the hours, so it is worth calling beforehand on 606 85 57 92, the number given by Antequera Tourism.

Allow about 45 minutes. There are stairs up to the rooms, and it is a visit that interests adults and teenagers more than small children, though the Nativity scene usually appeals to everyone.

Getting there and what to combine

Plaza de las Descalzas is in the centre, in the lower part of the historic quarter, a few minutes' walk from the City Museum, in the Palacio de Nájera. From there you can climb to the Alcazaba and the Royal Collegiate Church of Santa María in a ten-minute uphill walk. Leave the car in one of the car parks in the centre: the streets are narrow.