Museo Valenciano del Juguete

The Museo Valenciano del Juguete occupies the former Payá factory in Ibi, the town that was home to Spain's largest toy industry for much of the twentieth century. The collection holds more than 6,000 pieces made between 1903 and the 1980s, though only part of it is on permanent display because of space.

From tinsmith's workshop to toy factory

The Payá family worked as tinsmiths and was already making small tin toys by the late nineteenth century, alongside other items such as ice-cream moulds and oil lamps. In 1905 the Payá brothers took over the family workshop and turned it into a factory built entirely around toys, one that became the country's largest and a pioneer in adding mechanisms to its products: in 1932 it launched the first electric locomotive made in Spain. The main building that now houses the museum dates from 1912 and was rebuilt in 1962; the adjoining workshop is from 1915. The museum itself was founded in 1990 and moved into this industrial complex in 2013.

What to see

The galleries display miniature trains, cars and motorcycles, planes, ships, dolls, kitchen and furniture sets, and old board games, made in Ibi and in other toy-making centres across Spain and Europe. The visit also covers how the industry spread through the town beyond Payá, with firms such as Rico and Verdú, and why Ibi is still known as Spain's toy-making centre. Ibi sits in the L'Alcoià comarca next to Alcoy, home to another notable museum of the area, the Museo Arqueológico Camilo Visedo Moltó.

Admission is ticketed, and the museum works well with children, who can spot older versions of toys still made today; it features among the suggestions in the guide to things to do in Alicante with kids. The building itself, with its original factory structure intact, is part of the appeal. To see more of Ibi, the historic centre also holds the Iglesia de la Transfiguración del Señor and the monument to Ibi's ice-cream makers, honouring another of the town's traditional trades.