7 Unique Souvenir Stores in Malaga

My daughter started the magnet thing during her gap year, working as an au pair in New York. Every place we went, she insisted on a magnet, and it stuck (we even have a Málaga one on our own fridge now, four years into living here, which still feels a bit strange). It’s made me pay more attention to what actually counts as a good souvenir, and how much of what’s sold in this city is just plastic filler on a spinning rack.

I’ve bought something at five of the seven shops below, a fan, a puzzle, a straw donkey head, a print, a pair of earrings. The other two are newer finds, one I stumbled on after dark and one that only opened in October, so I can’t claim a purchase at either yet, but both are too good to leave out. These are where I’d send you for unique souvenirs in Málaga, instead of the stalls on the main strip.

All seven of these sit in Málaga’s Old Town, so if you’re still deciding where to base yourself, it’s worth picking somewhere central.

Unique souvenir shops in Málaga: the seven I’d send you to

Here they are in the order I’d walk them.

Mapas y Compañía

Hot air balloons hang from the ceiling at Mapas y Compañía, on Calle Compañía, 33, in Centro, and there are globes lit up from the inside among the shelves. Walking in felt like stepping into a whole new world, genuinely a little magical.

I came out with a 3D puzzle, around 40 euros.

The shelves go well past books. Travel guides, cartography, globes, geography-themed gifts, cups and birthday cards you won’t easily find elsewhere in Málaga. There’s a small stock of English-language titles too, for adults and kids, some of them bilingual editions, and a handful of French books mixed in among the Spanish.

One whole cabinet is given over to Tintin, and one of the shop windows is dressed with the characters. It’s the kind of window you find yourself stopping at anyway, puzzle or no puzzle.

The gift shop inside the Carmen Thyssen museum

The gift shop at Carmen Thyssen, one of the museums worth building a day around in Málaga, doesn’t ask for a ticket, you can walk straight in without paying to see the exhibits. Next door there’s a café with a terrace and an indoor section, decent coffee, a good place to land once you’ve finished browsing.

I picked up a small print of Boy with a Hen, the original by the Spanish painter Manuel Benedito Vives, somewhere between 12 and 20 euros. They stock prints of every painting the museum holds, so whatever caught your eye on the walls, there’s a version of it for sale by the till.

And if the ticket price is putting you off the collection itself, it’s free on Sundays from 4pm (12 euros otherwise, 8 euros reduced). Go for that, stay for the coffee. If you’d rather have someone else string the old town’s museums together into one morning, a guided old town tour is the easy way to do it.

La Familia Concept Store

La Familia Concept Store is one of those shops that always seems to have someone in it, busyish more often than not. It’s at Calle Santa Lucía 14, right opposite the Church of the Holy Martyrs Ciriaco and Paula.

It belongs to Clément and Sarah, a French couple who worked with children and in creative jobs for years before opening it as a concept store for the whole family. I met Sarah for the first time in October 2026, and you can see that family idea on the shelves.

Through the window: gorgeous tiled floors as soon as you’re in, then shelves that mix fans and tote bags with kids’ toys, shoes, salt and pepper shakers, stationery. Nothing about it says one category, it’s more a general store with a good eye for what people actually pick up.

My own fan came from here, somewhere in the 8 to 12 euro range depending on which one caught my eye.

Alegría, Arte de Andalucía

I walked past Alegría a week after it opened in October 2026 and ended up chatting to one of the three partners behind it. They travelled Andalucía end to end choosing pieces from the makers themselves, and everything in the shop is made in the region.

Since that first visit the team has been in touch and sent me a photo of the three of them outside the shop: Yulian, Lidia and Sebastián, three friends who set Alegría up to celebrate Andalusian craftsmanship and to offer something different from the traditional souvenir. They work with more than 20 local artisans, and everything they sell is made in Andalucía.

The best thing about the place is how it’s laid out. Each artisan gets a photo, where they’re from and a few lines about their work, with their own pieces arranged around it, whether that’s ceramics, fans, dolls or straw donkeys.

The green pottery is by Pablo Tito, one of the best-known potters in Andalucía. He’s the fourth generation of a family of potters from Úbeda, where that green glaze comes from, and he grew up in his father’s and grandfather’s workshop. If you’re heading up that way, Úbeda’s pottery workshops on Calle Valencia let you watch the potters at work.

The one that stopped me was a traditional Andalusian chair, a wooden frame with a hand-woven seat. The owner told me the man who makes them is the last person in Andalucía still doing it by hand.

Prices are high, but there’s a reason for it. Many of these makers are the last of their kind in Spain and a few are genuinely famous, so this isn’t where you come for a five-euro magnet.

A hand-painted rooster botijo, the traditional clay water jug, was 75 euros, though a small ceramic bell on the same shelf was about 15. I didn’t buy anything on this first visit.

There’s more to come, too. They’ve told me they’re planning a second, larger shop in Málaga in the first half of 2027, where they want to run workshops with their artisans. That’s their plan rather than a booked date, so check before you build a trip around it.

It’s at Calle Comedias 13. Their website doesn’t say much yet beyond the ceramics, so walking in is the only real way to see what they’ve got.

Alfajar Cerámica Artesanal

I found this place completely by chance one evening, after dark. It’s at Calle Císter 1, inside the Palacio de Zea-Salvatierra. The building itself is 17th-century baroque, near the Cathedral.

The shop’s family-run and has been for decades, selling handcrafted vases and tiles, along with jewellery and art from other local designers. I haven’t bought anything yet. I want to go back.

Temporánea Concept Shop Málaga

Temporánea Concept Shop is in Local 1 at Palacio de Salinas, Calle Salinas 6, Distrito Centro, 29015 Málaga. What caught my eye on the shelves were the hand-painted postcards, the Málaga-themed t-shirts and a good stack of books.

I ended up buying a straw donkey head for around 30 euros, and it’s been sitting near my plants at home ever since. There’s more beyond that, scarves, bookmarks and posters among them, and they’ll do a personalised souvenir if you ask.

Everything in the shop comes from local artists and designers, the same kind of makers you’ll find at La Merced’s artisan market on a Sunday, each piece built around an iconic Málaga location. Worth a stop before you reach for the usual fridge magnets down the road.

Roto

Javier Ruiz used to be a lawyer. He left the profession behind to open Roto, on Calle Pastora 1 in Centro, and I know him now from visiting the shop so many times over the years.

You can spot it before you’re even at the door: old fans and records hang outside and fill the window. Inside there’s antique figurines, radios, gramophones, vinyl records, antique tobacco tins and vintage photographs.

Of the seven shops in this piece, Roto is the one I’d call my favourite, and it isn’t close. That’s mostly down to one thing, the abstract earrings. There’s a whole selection of them hung on an open umbrella somewhere in that clutter, which is such a strange and lovely way to display them that I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

I bought a pair shaped like slabs of chocolate there, for 10 euros.

One of them has a bite taken out of it, like the chocolate itself had already been started.”

Souvenir shops in Málaga: map, walking route and what I paid

All seven shops sit in Málaga’s centro, the old town. If you’re staying centrally, somewhere like Molina Lario or Palacio Solecio, you can walk to every one of them. If you’re driving in, check where you can actually park in the centre before you set off.

If you want to see them all in one go, start at Mapas y Compañía and follow the numbers. It’s about 1.4 km, roughly 20 minutes of actual walking, so the browsing is what takes the time.

Roto’s the outlier, about 400 metres south of Temporánea, which is why it comes last. Leave it off and the walk drops to about a kilometre.

La Familia closes for lunch between 2pm and 3pm, and only opens 11am to 1pm on Sundays. The Carmen Thyssen museum itself is free to enter on Sundays from 4pm. A nice one to build a slow afternoon around, especially if you’re already chasing Málaga’s more unusual corners.