Ateneo de Málaga

We are an artistic and cultural association of public interest, founded in 1966 to promote and spread culture.

Our work is marked by an interdisciplinary approach across our sections, from which we organise activities covering every area of creation: the plastic and performing arts, literature, science, philosophy and more. At the Ateneo, any discipline can be approached across boundaries and thought through together. For all these reasons we have been, are and will remain a space devoted to the vanguard of art and thought.

Since 2000 our home has been the former San Telmo School on Calle Compañía, in the heart of the old town of Málaga: an old building erected as the Colegio de San Sebastián and novitiate of the Society of Jesus, together with a church. Building work was completed in the second half of the seventeenth century. After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the space was divided up for various uses and became home to a succession of institutions, most of them connected with education and culture: the Royal Schools of Latin and Rhetoric, the San Telmo Nautical College, the Montepío de Cosecheros, the Maritime and Land Consulate, the Academy and School of Fine Arts, the Teacher Training Colleges, the Málaga Science Society and even the Museum of Fine Arts.

Beyond the beauty of the building and its architectural, historical and artistic value, it stands out as an invaluable protagonist of Málaga’s memory. Since the Ateneo took on its responsibility as tenant, we have worked to conserve, adapt and maintain it, recovering it for the city as heritage and opening it to the public.