CCCB – Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture
The nerve centre of cultural innovation
One of Barcelona’s most avant-garde cultural sites is actually a converted almshouse. The current building of the CCCB (Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture), which won the FAD design award in 1993, plays host to exhibitions, concerts, debates and festivals oriented to new technologies and new styles.
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Why visit the CCCB?
The Casa de la Caritat almshouse, established in the early 19th century for the city’s forsaken, is now a cultural complex located in the Raval district that stands out due to both its contemporary architecture and its extremely intensive activity, which includes creative research, thematic exhibitions, international debates, literature, experimental cinema and technological transformation.
The renovation of Casa de la Caritat by the architects Helio Piñón and Albert Viaplana won the FAD design award in 1993 because it transformed a 19th-century complex into a prismatic structure with a glass facade that seems to lean over the Pati de les Dones courtyard, using mirrors and reflections to construct a metaphor on the changes the city has made to the landscape.
Throughout its history the Casa de la Caritat building has been used for a number of different purposes. It was a church in the 12th century, the Montalegre convent in the 13th century and then a Jesuit seminary in the 16th century. In the 18th century it was home to military barracks and a prison. Finally, in 1802 King Charles IV of Spain authorised the creation of a charity establishment, Casa de la Caritat, to house the city’s most disadvantaged population. In the 19th century it was home to a printing house, a funeral parlour and a vocational training school.
In 1957, Casa de la Caritat moved to Les Llars Mundet and the building was not used again until Barcelona Provincial Council decided to convert it into a state-of-the-art centre for contemporary creation and reflection.
How do you get to the CCCB?
With the Blue Route of Barcelona Bus Turístic you can hop off at the Plaça de Catalunya stop to visit two of Barcelona’s most important contemporary culture centres.
For the most curious of you
- Did you know? On the ceramic tiles on the walls of the Pati de les Dones you can still read the 19 proverbs and moral sentences that the orphan girls who lived at Casa de la Caritat had to repeat, such as ‘Men come and go like the wind; God’s truth is eternal’.
- Local’s tip: On the first Sunday of the month the Barcelona Centre of Contemporary Culture (CCCB) allows free entry to the lookout point located on the fifth floor, where you can contemplate the sea, the Gothic Quarter, the Old Town, Montjuïc Mountain and Tibidabo.
- A must: To experience the ambience of innovative contemporary Barcelona and to discover alternative cultural movements.
