Barcelona Guide
El Raval
Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
Address: Adjoining MACBA, up c/Montalegre
Opening time: Tues– Sun 11am–8pm, Thurs until 10pm
Price: €4.50 or €6 depending on exhibitions visited, free on 1st Wed of month
Telephone: 933 064 100
Website: www.cccb.org
The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, or CCCB, hosts temporary art and city-related exhibitions as well as supporting a cinema and a varied concert and festival programme. The imaginatively restored building is a prime example of the juxtaposition of old and new; originally built in 1714 on the site of a fourteenth-century Augustinian convent, it was for hundreds of years an infamous workhouse and lunatic asylum.
In the entrance to the centre, in what is now called the Plaça de les Dones, you can see the old tile panels and facade in a patio presided over by a small statue of Sant Jordi (patron saint of Catalunya). At the back of the building, the C3 café-bar has a sunny terrassa on the modern square joining the CCCB to the MACBA.