• The exhibition celebrates the centenary of the building, designed by Antonio Palacios, based on the competition held in 1919 to build the new headquarters.el Círculo.

• Organized in conjunction with Acción Cultural Española, the Goya room offers a journey through the origin, design and construction of one of the most emblematic buildings on Madrid's Gran Vía.

• El Círculo de Bellas Artes Today, it stands not only as an architectural landmark, but as a symbol of modernity, culture and urban life in the heart of Madrid.

February 11 2026. El Círculo de Bellas Artes The exhibition "The House of Arts. Open since 1926" has been unveiled, celebrating the centenary of the building, designed by Antonio Palacios and completed in 1926. The exhibition offers a journey through the origin, design, and construction of one of the most emblematic buildings on Madrid's Gran Vía. For a century, the building has been a landmark of the city's cultural life, a direct witness to Madrid's urban, social, and artistic transformation, and remains one of its most recognizable icons.

Original plans, preparatory drawings, period photographs, and previously unpublished pieces are presented, allowing for a precise reconstruction of the building's conception and execution process, starting from the competition held in 1919 to erect the new headquarters.el CírculoThese materials, many of them little known to the public, not only shed light on the technical complexity of the project, but also on the aesthetic and cultural aspirations that guided Palacios and the institution in those years.

The exhibition focuses on some of the building's most distinctive features: its innovative spatial and structural solutions, the monumentality of its volumes, and the careful integration of ornamental elements that define its urban presence. Visitors will appreciate how Palacios combined classical architectural styles with the new metropolitan trends of the early 20th century and how his intervention helped solidify the Gran Vía's identity as the city's modern thoroughfare.

The exhibition offers an interpretation of the building understood both as an architectural heritage site and as a living space that has accompanied the country's cultural evolution. For over a century, its halls, exhibition spaces, studios, workshops, and meeting places have welcomed generations of artists, writers, filmmakers, thinkers, and diverse audiences, making it a privileged venue for cultural creation and experience.

A controversial start

When el Círculo de Bellas Artes In 1919, the organization launched a competition to design its new headquarters, appointing several members of its Architecture section as jurors, who would lose that status if they entered the competition. This was the case with Antonio Palacios.

Even then, the vision was for an ambitious and monumental building, with an urban, cosmopolitan, and metropolitan character. Furthermore, the competition rules clearly stated its ambition: "Contestants must take into account, in the overall layout of the building, the eminently artistic and modern character that the building intended as social housing must possess."el Círculo de Bellas Artes».

Some of the most important architects of the time participated. Fifteen proposals were submitted, of which three were selected as finalists (Zuazo and Quintanilla, Hernández Briz and Saíz Martínez, and the Fernández Balbuena brothers). Antonio Palacios's project was disqualified beforehand for exceeding the maximum building height stipulated in the competition guidelines. This occurred under ambiguous circumstances, as other designs that surpassed this height were not disqualified; moreover, Palacios's was one of the most outstanding proposals, so its disqualification caused outrage in some quarters.

The preliminary designs were exhibited for a month and a half at the Retiro Exhibition Palace, where they could be viewed by the public, architecture and fine arts enthusiasts, and the members themselves.el CírculoThe three finalist teams refined their proposals, which were to be submitted to the final selection, but the competition was declared void because none of them reached the necessary majority.

Finally, it was decided to submit the choice to the verdict of the partners, incorporating at that time all the rejected preliminary projects that wanted a second chance, to which several of them agreed, among which was Palacios's.

His proposal, which had allegedly been unfairly rejected by his colleagues on the court, was instead overwhelmingly approved by the members. Amidst considerable controversy, Antonio Palacios took charge of the project in May 1920.

The construction ofel Círculo

Antonio Palacios sought to express an urban and metropolitan vocation with the future building. His project constituted a renewed and symbolic architectural language, characterized by its complexity, mindful of tradition and memory, but also of a contemporary and symbolic modernity.

Palacios's description of the building in his report has been preserved, detailing its layout, distribution, uses, functions, ornamentation, construction materials, and pictorial and sculptural decoration. This report faithfully reflects the architect's spirit and intentions for the new building: to unite architectural and ornamental grandeur with the artistic, cultural, and recreational function of the institution.

The exhibition presents documents relating to the building's construction. This exceptional material offers insight into the building process, showcasing technical and installation plans, as well as corrections or details of parts of the building that required clarification or design changes.

Contractor offers, minutes and settlements are also preserved, revealing the variety of trades involved in the works -carpenters, marble workers, locksmiths, painters-, as well as the work of artisans of a more artistic nature, such as the mosaics of Mario Maragliano or the sculptures of Ángel García, a frequent collaborator of Palacios.

1926: the inauguration of the House of Arts

On November 8, 1926, the new building was inaugurated, with extensive press coverage and an exhibition by Ignacio Zuloaga, and was also attended by King Alfonso XIII and other authorities.

Despite initial criticism and opposition, from its beginnings the exhibitions, gatherings, concerts, painting and drawing classes, literary events, and parties transformed el Círculo de Bellas Artes in a cosmopolitan, metropolitan place, committed to modern life and its conflicts.

In the same year as its inauguration – 1926 – Antonio Palacios was received as a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. However, architecture was undergoing a process of change and, after el CírculoHe only received one more commission in Madrid: the Banco Mercantil e Industrial, on Alcalá Street.

El Círculo de Bellas Artes It was the culmination of a series of buildings with which Palacios decisively contributed to modernizing the city and turning it into the longed-for metropolis that many dreamed of.

Regarding the exhibition, el Círculo It has published a catalogue that includes all the works in the exhibition and a detailed study of both the building's construction process and the work of Antonio Palacios. The texts included are: Grammars of the Metropolis (Juan Miguel Hernández León), The Genesis of a Shift in the Way of Understanding Architecture. Antonio Palacios: From the Communications Palace and the Bank of the River Plate to the Social Housing Complexel Círculo de Bellas Artes (Carlos Sambricio), Going around the Círculo, a controversial competition (Álvaro Bonet), Portraying the city, projecting the symbol: el Círculo de Bellas Artes between light and architecture (Helena Pérez Gallardo) and Some irrational gestures in the work of Palacios (Iñaki Ábalos).

Centenary of the building

The House of Arts. Open since 1926, it is part of a program with which el Círculo This year marks the centenary of the building, an anniversary that will form the backbone of many of the proposals that the institution will organize in the coming months.

Hatching. The Círculo de Bellas Artes The exhibitions "The Owl of Minerva" and "The Owl of Minerva" complete the program. The former analyzes the structural and conceptual renewal that redefined the institution's role in Spanish cultural life during the 80s and 90s. "The Owl of Minerva," for its part, offers a critical reflection based on the spirit of "The Imperative Dream" (1991), a landmark exhibition that transformed el Círculo in a field of political and poetic friction. Twelve artists then disrupted traditional exhibition logics and intervened in the institution as a space of resistance against dominant discourses on power, gender and identity.

In the music section, we welcome Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu, who will headline an extraordinary concert on May 24th. Lise Davidsen, one of today's most captivating sopranos, will perform a Schubert repertoire alongside James Baillieu, a refined pianist and ideal partner in this exploration of Schubert's poetry and musical drama.

Also part of the building's centenary celebrations will be the launch of the Archive Portal, the living, accessible result of an ambitious cataloging, classification, and digitization project that serves as a gateway to Madrid's past and cultural soul. Thanks to this portal, the public will be able to consult thousands of previously unpublished documents on the institution's history from the late 19th century to the present day.

The grand birthday celebration will take place on May 9th, coinciding with Europe Day. It will be an open house where the Círculo invites visitors to look at, explore, inhabit, and experience the building: a grand celebration of art, creation, and shared life through music, visual arts, performance, games, and interventions.

The centenary ofel Círculo It is therefore not a point of arrival, but a new beginning: an invitation to remember together the legacy of those who have made their mark.el Círculo an essential place to propose, through culture, new ways of imagining and building what is to come.