Museum of Miniatures in Mijas

Max’s Caravan, which opened in May 1972, is one of Mijas’ many attractions and just must be visited.

Here’s not a tourist that can resist going in after reading the posters outside the museum explaining what can be seen inside:

• Stuffed dressed fleas.
• A ballet dancer carved out of a tooth pick
• A naval battle on the head of a pin.
• Leonardo Da Vinci’s last supper on a grain of rice …etc. (The museum houses a total of 360 items)

Very varied materials have been used to confection the miniatures, but all very every-day ones: chalk from school, soap, a pin, a match, a tooth pick, bread crumbs, a drawing pin; all materials readily at hand.

Max’s Caravan is the result of a life dedicated to the art of travel, all over the world, living with the people who inhabit it, with men and women of other races, with tribes anchored in time. It is definitively an ode to adventure and, of course, an example of human patience from the peoples of the five continents.

Actually the museum is reformed as it was originally a typical caravan.

About PROFESSOR MAX

He was born in Brihuega (Guadalajara). He studied medicine, was a school teacher and a “practicante” (nurse specialising in giving injections). He entered the old school of journalism “El Debate” and was also a hypnotiser and self-taught magician very well-known throughout the world. He was a bohemian, traveller and adventurer and his taste for antiques led him to collect small objects, according to him, because he had neither the money nor a house of sufficient size to keep larger ones.

He travelled all over Europe and Africa with the show “A man and a suitcase are the greatest show on earth”.

He spent the longest period in Africa, perhaps, almost certainly, drawn by his adventurous spirit and he recounted endless anecdotes amongst which the most memorable were always the strategies he had had to employ to get the miniatures.

On one occasion he was unable to gain access to a “Bauluba” tribe and he had to organise a session of hypnotism on the path which the chief of the tribe had to take. When the chief, who was a witch-doctor, saw how he used his powers of hypnosis on some members of the tribe, he offered him whatever he wanted if he would reveal his secrets. From this meeting professor Max obtained the shrunken head of a white man, the most valuable item in the museum.

Professor Max told how the hair had been analysed by the F.B.I., who certified that the head was of a white man, who appeared to have been a Caucasian missionary who had travelled those distant lands a hundred years ago. Some authors are of the opinion that since it is the shrunken head of a white man it is unique in the world.

On his travels he collected miniatures from all over the world planning to open a museum in his old age which would provide him with an income. He eventually collected 30,000 miniatures, valued at one hundred million Pesetas but died in 1975 (65 years old) on his way driving from Malaga to Benidorm where he just did open another museum.