Ulpiano Checa Museum

The Ulpiano Checa Museum is located in Colmenar de Oreja, the birthplace of Ulpiano Checa, an artist specialising in historical and orientalist painting. The monographic museum, which opened in 1960, is located in his birthplace (the house of the "seven patios") and is divided into areas where you can discover this unknown painter and his relationship with Colmenar.

It is the best collection dedicated to a single artist and a reference in the exhibition spaces of the region. The museum houses a large number of oil paintings, watercolours, engravings and illustrated books, as well as some reference works and a lot of varied documentation on the figure of the painter, one of the most sought-after of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The building, restored and extended, has its access through well-kept gardens, where in addition to the bust of the painter, there is a monument to the characteristic elements of the city: the stone and the jar.

Inside, the 20-square-metre work "Last Days of Pompeii" stands out, and the collection has been expanded with acquisitions of works in London, New York, Paris, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Oslo and Madrid. These new donations and deposits have made the museum the most important repository of his work and one of the most important municipal museums in Spain.