MACBA
Richard Meier's white box is only half the show — the plaza out front is one of the world's most famous skate spots.
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Meier's 120-metre-long white building glazes much of its south wall, so daylight pours into galleries holding roughly 5,000 works of post-1945 Catalan and Spanish art, plus some international names — a bright modern object dropped into the old streets of El Raval.
What to look for
- The long glazed south elevation facing the plaza — it lights the galleries and lets you look back across the square from inside.
- The Capella del MACBA across the plaza: a chapel in the medieval Convent dels Àngels (which names the square), reused as a separate exhibition space.
- Skateboarders working Plaça dels Àngels out front — skaters worldwide rank it among the sport's best-known spots.
The plaza out front is a public square, open to all; the collection spans three periods from the 1940s to now, so pick an era rather than trying to see it all.
MACBA is one of 39 sights worth the detour in Barcelona, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Barcelona pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Barcelona
- Sagrada FamíliaGaudí is buried beneath a church begun in 1882 and still unfinished — one that in 2025 became the world's tallest.
- Camp NouThe bowl that once crammed 120,000 people in to watch Barça — European football's biggest room.
- Park GüellGaudí's failed luxury subdivision — 2 of 60 planned homes ever built — that Barcelona inherited as a mosaic playground.
- Casa Milà (La Pedrera)Gaudí's last private house looks like a wind-carved sea cliff parked on a city corner.
- Casa BatllóGaudí reskinned a townhouse into a slain dragon, down to columns shaped like leg bones.
- Barcelona CathedralThirteen white geese live in the cloister — one for each year Saint Eulalia was alive before Rome killed her.