Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Elche

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Elche (MACE) occupies the building that once served as the town hall of the old Raval de la Morería quarter, a Baroque construction from 1655 with arcades and a former fish market on one corner, right in the centre of Elche. In 1974 the city council approved reforming and expanding it into a municipal museum; the interior was rebuilt in 1978 with two extra floors added above the original structure, and the museum opened in 1980.

A collection built by artists

The collection began as a gesture from a group of artists who donated their own work and that of colleagues to form the museum's founding holdings, with names representative of 20th-century Valencian and Spanish art such as Arcadi Blasco, Juana Francés, Salvador Soria, Toni Miró, Equipo Crónica and Genovés. The permanent collection is spread across four rooms: one for work from the 1950s, another for the 1980s, one for abstract art and one for figurative art.

Visiting

The building itself, with its stone arcades and Baroque facade, is part of what makes the visit worthwhile. It sits a short walk from the Basílica de Santa María and the Museo Arqueológico e Histórico de Elche, making it easy to see all three in one morning around the historic centre. Being an indoor space with a short route through it, it's a practical option on a rainy day, one of the alternatives listed in the guide to what to do when it rains.