
Barcelona · Raval
MACBA
Richard Meier's white gallery, with the most famous skate plaza in the world outside it
The ramp, a glass-fronted spine that turns visitors into part of the facade
Richard Meier dropped a white modernist box into the middle of the Raval in 1995 as part of a plan to change the district, and the plan worked in ways nobody wrote down: the plaza in front became, entirely by accident, the most filmed skate spot on earth.
Inside, the collection covers art from the 1950s onwards with a Catalan and Spanish emphasis and a consistently intellectual temporary programme. The ramp along the glass front is the best part of the building.
The detail
Good to know
- Opened
- 1995, architect Richard Meier
- Focus
- Art since 1950
- Outside
- The most famous skate plaza in the world
- Free
- Saturday afternoons
More in Barcelona
Three more rooms in Barcelona
MuseumIconBarcelona · Montjuïc
Fundació Joan Miró
A white museum on a hill, designed by the artist's friend to hold his own gift to the city
MuseumFree hoursBarcelona · Montjuïc
MNAC
Romanesque church frescoes lifted whole from the Pyrenees into a palace above the city
Opera houseBarcelona · La Rambla
Gran Teatre del Liceu
Burnt down twice, rebuilt twice, and still the grandest room on the Rambla
Museums
Elsewhere: museums
MuseumIconBerlin · Mitte
Museumsinsel
Five museums on one sandbank in the Spree, built to hold an empire's idea of itself
MuseumBerlin · Moabit
Hamburger Bahnhof
A nineteenth-century railway terminus holding the contemporary collection of the nation
MuseumFreeLondon · Bloomsbury
The British Museum
Eight million objects, two and a half centuries of argument and no admission charge