Museo de los Soldaditos de Plomo L'Iber, Valencia

L'Iber is a museum of historical miniatures housed inside the Palace of the Marquises of Malferit, a noble residence whose origins reach back to the late medieval period. Its rooms present tiny armies, ceremonies, battles, and everyday scenes, while the building itself remains one of Valencia’s finest civil examples of Mediterranean Gothic architecture. The collection began with Álvaro Noguera Giménez’s lifelong passion and now contains more than a million lead figures, although only a portion can be displayed at any one time.

The museum opened in 2007 through the Libertas 7 Foundation, and its public displays include more than 100,000 pieces across fifteen rooms. Look for the model of Valencia’s Corpus Christi procession: Vicente Juliá, known as Chauve, created a procession stretching 27 metres and containing more than 1,200 figures, with clergy, civic groups, soldiers, giants, and the Moma dance. Another striking scene recreates the Battle of Almansa in 1707, an episode that shaped the Spanish succession.

This palace also carries a political history: between 4 November 1936 and 17 May 1937, it housed the Ministry of Justice. From here came a decree recognising full civil equality for men and women. You are looking at a miniature world, but its setting and subjects reach across centuries of Valencian, Spanish, and global history.