El Cubo of the Centre Pompidou

In front of you is Málaga's most modern image: a cube of glass and steel with coloured squares that changes its look with the light. It is, in fact, the skylight of a museum right beneath your feet.

1A museum under the quay

The building, called El Cubo (The Cube), was designed by the municipal architects Javier Pérez de la Fuente and Juan Antonio Marín Malavé. Its galleries sink below the plaza. On 28 March 2015 the Centre Pompidou Málaga opened here, the first outpost abroad of the great Paris centre for modern art. It shows works from its 20th- and 21st-century collection in exhibitions that change every few years.

The cube's colours are an artwork in their own right: the installation "Incubé" by the French artist Daniel Buren, created in 2015. It proved so popular that the City Council bought it in 2017.

2The port that came back to the city

For more than a century, a fence cut the port off from the centre. In November 2011 Muelle Uno opened – a promenade with shops and restaurants on the old quay – and the city won back its waterfront. The Palmeral de las Sorpresas, with its white pergolas, completes this walk by the water.

The quay itself is old: the first stone of the modern port was lowered into the water on 1 January 1588, in the reign of Philip II.

3What to look for

• Buren's coloured panels and the way they tint the shadows on the ground.
• The Alcazaba and Gibralfaro above the city, seen from the quay.
• The large yachts in the marina next door.