The city of Alicante is a stylish city that has new harbour complex, clean beaches, outstanding museums, exceptional shops and buzzing nightlife. Although Alicante has reinvented itself into a modern city with endless entertainment, it has not lost its Spanish roots. Apart from modern lifestyle, the city also has a lot to offer to those who are interested in its cultural history.
The Gravina Museum of Fine Arts in Alicante is located in the splendid 18th century Gravina Palace. It exhibits a phenomenal collection of artwork, combining sumtuary art with period furniture, textiles and more. The museum stands in the Palacio del Conde de Lumiares, a four floor building constructed between 1748 and 1808 and declared a historical monument.
The museum has a vast collection of painting and sculpture of Alicante from the sixteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth century. The funds of the provincial council has enabled the museum to collect as many as 500 works including a sculpture by Francisco Salzillo, and a portrait of Ferdinand VII by Valencian painter Vicente López Portaña. The museum has also several works of the most important regional painters of the nineteenth century: Antonio Gisbert, Joaquín Agrasot, Lorenzo Casanova, and Fernando Cabrera. These works reflect the major trends of the nineteenth: historicism, customs, portraits, landscapes.