The building

The refurbishment project devised by architects Manuel Portolés Sanjuán, Francisco Javier García-Quijada Romero and Salvador Fraga Rivas strictly respected the original layout of the building, which followed the "panoptical" concept developed by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Therefore, its radial distribution has been maintained by restoring the central panoptical space within its cylindrical structure and shifting the entrance to the exhibition rooms from the main facade to the centre of the building. From this point, one can see the layout of the building: three wings and four courtyards which extend outwards from a central nucleus, all of them with rooms around their perimeter.