Seville Flamenco Museum

Spanish culture is so much about the Flamenco dance – and Seville is one of the Flamenco hotspots. Thus, it is not too surprising that there is a Flamenco Museum in Seville. I visited it during my time in the city in early December. Here is a review.

Seville Flamenco Museum – Location & Admission

The Flamenco Museum is located in Calle Manuel Rojas Marcos in the middle of Seville’s historic city center. I cannot even really give you hints, how to get there effectively. When I decided to just stroll through the city, I happened to pass the museum and decided to dare a visit.

The adult admission is ten Euro.

Seville Flamenco Museum – The Exhibition

The key exhibition is on the first floor of the Flamenco Museum. After that, you are guided to other floors. However, I spent most of my some one hour visit in the main exhibition.

Main Exhibition

In order to make the visitor feel flamenco, the museum is using a lot of modern techniques. In the first room dealing with the historic cultural origins of the dance, there are multiple video screens showing different dance elements. There are even Phoenician and Greek roots you can show, but also elements from India, Arabia, the Caribbean and the French Bolero.

The second room shows interactive screens, where you can learn about the different palos (dance styles). All interactive displays are given in six languages, including English, French, German, Chinese and Japanese. I just tried out English and German commentary and they were both very well translated. The displays in this area also allow you to learn about the different movements and techniques used. Furthermore, there are some shoes displayed.

A very nice room which have a lot of projections and displays again shows how flamenco has evolved over time.

My favorite room, though, is the fourth one, which contains quite some exhibits about famous dancers. Again, there are touchscreens everywhere, which telll you stories behind the exhibits. To me, one of the most impressive exhibits was the dress worn by Cristina Hoyos during the Opening Ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. But the room features a lot of other interesting items.

The final room of the key exhibition floor is a multimedia show of flamenco, which is quite cool to watch, but hard to take pictures of – just enjoy it when you visit.

Other Areas

The floor you will visit next is above the stage area (see below) and covers a number of flamenco photographs, introducing you to more dancers and flamenco eras.

A quite interesting part of the exhibition was located on the upper floor, which is also has some offices and is used for conferences. It featured a special exhibition on different flamenco tattoos, which I felt to be a quite cool add-on to my visit. There were also some other exhibits around. Finally, on the lower floor, there are some flamenco paintings.

Gift Shop

You cannot leave the museum before passing the souvenir area. Apart from tourist stuff like figurines, there is also quite a vast collection of flamenco books and CDs.

Seville Flamenco Museum – Dance Shows

In the evening, the Flamenco Museum also offers Flamenco Dance Shows on their stage. If I saw correctly, the tickets at the quite intimate area are 22 Euro and the show lasts about an hour. The show is not part of my rating of the museum.

Seville Flamenco Museum – My View

To me, the Seville Flamenco Museum was one of these places which are extremely hard to be rated. On the one hand, I feel that the founders did a good job. They present Flamenco well and I learned quite a lot about it during my visit. On the other hand, it just feels to be too limited and too small – you may also argue about the value for money. Ten Euro feels to much to me. If you are into dance or Spanish culture, you will love this place. When I revised my visit by working on the pictures, I again saw how much love the founders put in this place. They charge you too much money, but they tried to give you something back. So I decided to go for the Top Pick here. I also explicitly value that they do not try to present hundreds of shoes or dresses. The museum concentrates on the story it is telling – and I feel it does tell the story well.