In the old town of Cáceres in western Spain, a white new building stands out from the UNESCO World Heritage Site, which, like an urban adaptor, cleverly uses the favorable and also the deficits of its location to give a unique private art collection in Spain a suitable architectural framework.

Designed by Tuñón Arquitectos, the Helga de Alvear Museum's layout is entirely attuned to the whims of its collection without being obsequious.

The museum shows 200 works from the German-born collector's collection of more than 3,000 objects, which includes sculptures, paintings, video art and photography.

The origin of the collection dates back to 1967, when de Alvear met the gallery owner Juana Mordó and came into contact with the Spanish art scene.

Later she took over the management of the Galería Mordó and then opened her own gallery.

De Alvear was born in Kirn an der Nahe in 1936.

When she came to Madrid to learn Spanish, she met the architect Jaime de Alvear, whom she later married.

She often visited the Prado with him.

The exhibition in her new museum in Cáceres therefore also begins with Francisco de Goya's "Los Caprichos" and its adaptations - beautifully presented in a specially tailored cabinet.

Because the art scene was still quite closed in Spain in the late 1960s, the Palatinate heiress came up with the idea of ​​democratizing access to art by building a museum;

with the new building in Cáceres it has now been fulfilled.

Thanks to her generosity, not only could the museum be built and stocked with highlights from her collection, it can also be visited permanently free of charge.

The architect of the museum, Emilio Tuñón, made this accessibility the starting point of his design: visitors reach the entrance via a patio, which is connected to the historic city center via a passage.

The courtyard of the museum is paved like an urban plaza.

It was the opportunity to build in the heart of a city that made the collector choose the remote and poor region of Extremadura.

After deciding not to share the collection among her three daughters, she got in touch with Spanish regional governments.

Their ideas were understood best in Extremadura, and they didn't offer factory buildings on the outskirts of a city, but a plot of land in the best old town location.

intuition and knowledge

The new building was financed equally by de Alvear and Extremadura.

María Corral, the museum's curator, describes the German founder as a "passionate and ambitious woman, not calculating, unpretentious and sincere.

She would never buy anything she didn't like.

She acquires intuitively,” says Corral.

The subjectively compiled collection is characterized by a wide range.

The fact that it lacks method, complexity and rigor is both a disadvantage and an advantage.

A combination of emotion and knowledge, in the past one would have simply said taste, characterizes the art collection, which de Alvear sees as a private activity with a public purpose.

The opening exhibition reveals the diverse character of the collection.

The selection is "semi-permanent".

This means that individual works are exchanged,