Museu del Cinema
Museum · Girona
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Museu del Cinema, on Carrer de la Sèquia in Girona's old town, opened in 1998 as Spain's first museum devoted to cinema and now holds one of Europe's largest collections on the subject. It grew from Tomàs Mallol's roughly 20,000 objects, documents and films tracing 400 years of moving-image history. The building, once headquarters of Girona's water company, kept the tower that earned it the local name Casa de les Aigües.
Mallol, born in nearby Sant Pere Pescador in 1923, made 31 short films of his own between 1956 and 1977, winning national and international awards. His passion traced back to open-air screenings in his hometown's main square, and from 1968 he trawled markets and auctions across Catalonia, Spain and France for pieces, building relationships with dealers who specialized in early cinema and photography. Girona's city council bought the finished collection in January 1994. Inside, the holdings break down into specialties: 2,883 magic lantern pieces, more than 900 amateur film devices, and some 2,500 pieces of children's cinema, including 1,413 objects from the Barcelona toy-cinema brand Cine NIC. The building itself once pumped water from the Aiguaviva springs to the city's highest points, before newer water systems made it obsolete and it was renovated for the museum.
Practical
Open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00-18:00, Sundays 10:00-14:00 (until 19:00 on weekdays in July and August). Admission 7 euros, 3.50 reduced, free under 14; free entry the first Sunday of each month and on December 28, the anniversary of cinema's first public screening.
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