The facades of the Picasso Museum will undergo a rehabilitation

Five palaces with diverse origins and architectural characteristics make up the Picasso Museum on Montcada Street. The first building to house the cultural institution was the Berenguer d'Aguilar Palace, open since 1963. Later came the Casa Baró de Castellet, the Meca Palace, the Casa Mauri, and the Casa Finestres, reaching a total area of almost 11,000 square meters.

With a history dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries, the complex will see its exterior facades undergo a renovation to recover their original essence as much as possible. Work will also be carried out on the facades of the interior courtyards around which the different buildings are organized and which are not open to the public. In 2003, the last architectural intervention was carried out at the Picasso Museum, which consisted of the articulation of a large boulevard on the ground floor of the five palaces, parallel to Montcada Street, and a transversal axis that crosses it perpendicularly from the street to the back garden, which resulted in the creation of a public access space.

The municipal company BIMSA will be in charge of managing the new rehabilitation, after the Government Commission of the Barcelona City Council approved the project, developed by architects Oriol Gili, Clàudia Sanmartí, and Gemma Serch from the Matters firm. This studio has already been responsible for other rehabilitations in the city, such as that of several pavilions of the Hospital de Sant Pau.

The works have a budget of nearly 1.6 million euros and will be executed in five phases that will last for more than two years, during which time the museum will remain open and will adapt its route according to the different actions. The first phase of the works will focus on the facade of the buildings on Moncada Street and will last 11 months, with the start of works scheduled for this summer.

The rehabilitation of the facades of the Picasso Museum will complete the action that began in October 2021 with the intervention on the facades of the courtyards of the Berenguer d'Aguilar Palace and the Meca Palace. Still ongoing, these works are expected to finish in April, when work will continue on the courtyards of the Casa del Baró de Castellet and the Casa Finestres. According to the cultural institution's calculations, the four courtyards will be completely restored and open to the public next November.