Cinema Museum (Girona)

The modern Girona Cinema Museum, opened in 1998, is one of the most popular and attractive museum institutions in the city. It exhibits everything related to creation and audiovisual art.

Located in a modern and spectacular building in the centre of the city, the museum has a wide collection of artefacts, moviolas, cameras and other items about cinema belonging to the collection of Tomás Mallol, as well as a series of rooms explaining the evolution of cinema, television and everything related to audiovisual art.

The museum is organized into a series of clearly differentiated exhibition areas. The first is Coming Out of the Shadows, which explains the primitive attempts to create shows with shadows—something typical of 16th-century theatre. The Spell of the Lamp is the next room; there, the use of the magic lantern is exhibited and explained. This is a resource for creating still moving images from 200 years ago.

Then comes the appearance of photography during the first years of the 19th century and the camera obscura technique in the Optical Boxes room. The Image Animates is a room exhibiting information about the scientific advances that made the first pre-cinematographic attempts possible.

The Race to the Cinema and The Lumiére Brothers are the next rooms. They present the beginning of cinema in 1895 and the appearance of the cinematograph. The Tools of Cinema provides information about the origins of cinema at the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, a travelling and fun room created for the little ones allows them to discover the magic of making movies.

Due to its interesting content and creative and interactive nature, the Girona Cinema Museum is considered one of the most popular and visited museums in Catalonia.