MACA — Museu d'Art Contemporani d'Alacant

The MACA, Alicante's Museum of Contemporary Art, traces its origins to the Casa de la Asegurada, the oldest civil building in the city, built in 1685 as a grain store and considered a notable example of Valencian Baroque. Before becoming a museum it spent centuries as a grain store for years of shortage, a role far removed from the one it plays today and one that explains its simple layout and thick outer walls. It stands in the old town of Alicante.

Eusebio Sempere's donation

The museum grew out of a donation by the Alicante-born painter and sculptor Eusebio Sempere, who gave his personal collection of 20th-century art to the city. It opened as the old Museo de la Asegurada on 5 November 1977, with 177 paintings, sculptures and graphic works by 114 artists, including Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dalí and Juan Gris. After a complex restoration that folded the Casa de la Asegurada into a much larger building occupying an entire city block, with galleries spread across several connected floors, the MACA reopened its doors to the public in 2011, with far more exhibition space than the original 1970s museum ever had to work with, allowing room for a growing permanent collection and a regular programme of temporary shows.

The collection today

The museum's holdings have grown since then through new acquisitions and donations, though Sempere's original collection remains its core and the reason the museum exists at all. Entry is free, which makes it a regular stop on any route of free museums in Alicante, together with the MUBAG a few minutes' walk away. Anyone who prefers archaeology to contemporary art can find the MARQ nearby too, and the lively Mercat Central d'Alacant makes a good stop to round out a walk through the rest of the old town.