The exhibition Life of the Palacio de Cibeles is presented on the 2nd and 4th floors and in the Mirador of the CentroCentro Cultural Space.
The exhibition is based, on the one hand, on the container itself, which becomes the main work on display, and, on the other, on the historiographical material that defines its biography: the technical documents, images, opinions, historical events it has witnessed…
Faced with the collapse of the obsolete Post and Telegraph offices in Puerta del Sol since the mid-19th century, the Spanish government decided to build a new headquarters to house the postal and telegraphic services required by a city in full development and expansion.
The site occupied by the Jardines del Buen Retiro in the Plaza de Emilio Castelar (now Cibeles) was chosen as the new urban centre, accessible both to the population of the saturated historic centre and to the inhabitants of the new suburbs. The two young architects Antonio Palacios and Joaquín Otamendi won the public competition in 1904.
Even before its inauguration in 1919, the new headquarters of the Madrid Post and Telegraph Office was destined to become a controversial protagonist of Madrid’s iconography. Like it or not, the façade of the Palacio de Cibeles is still today the most recognisable image of the city: the one that represents it, if that is possible, next to the fountain that honours its goddess and presides over its square, in that constellation of unmistakable urban icons such as the Eiffel Tower, the London Bridge or the Roman Coliseum.
Known as the Post Office by the people of Madrid, the Palacio de Cibeles played a crucial role throughout the 20th century in both the political life of the city and the personal life of its citizens. Transformed more than a decade ago into the institutional headquarters of Madrid City Council and a cultural space, it continues to offer citizens the essence of the city’s diverse character: the traditional and the cosmopolitan, the modern and the traditional, the stately and the popular merge to form a multifaceted, resounding and enigmatic whole that is difficult to define or adjectivise.
