Saragossa Museum

Zaragoza's museum sits in a Neo-Renaissance palace built for the 1908 Hispano-French Exhibition, which marked the centenary of the city's brutal sieges during the Peninsular War. It gathers the archaeology and art of Aragon under one roof, from Roman mosaics up to modern painting.

Its point of pride is a hometown boy. Francisco Goya was born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, a village in the province, and the museum holds a group of his works, including early portraits and his darker later prints, tracing a painter who began with cheerful tapestry designs and ended recording the horrors he had lived through.

Around the Goyas run rooms of medieval Aragonese altarpieces in gold and tempera, and the Roman finds from Caesaraugusta, the colony that gave the city its name.