The National Museum of XXI Century Arts (MAXXI) is located in the area of the former Montello barrack in Flaminio quarter. Opened to the public on May 30th, 2010 it had already exceeded 100,000 visitors in few weeks.

The pioneering project of Zaha Hadid, well-kown Anglo-Iraqi architect, won the competition held in 1997 by the Ministry of Heritage and Culture to create a new museum for the twenty-first century Art collections. After modifications and downsizing and more than ten years of work, it was finally opened.


The building, where new highly innovative materials were used and created, such as a cement made especially for the MAXXI, then glass and aluminum, is on two levels connected by sinuous galleries and bounded by curved perimetrical walls. 

The MAXXI  had received two important awards: on October 2nd, 2010 won the Stirling Prize given by the Royal Institute of British Architects and on November 5th, it was awarded as'' the best building of the year 2010'' decreed at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. The jury of the WAF, chaired by Paul Finch, has motivated the award saying, "It’s a building that relates vividly with the volumes of the city. It’s as a Guggenheim unrolled path in continuous space (...)  which discussions will be carried on, in Architecture, for the next 50 years."

The MAXXI houses two museums:  MAXXI Art and MAXXI Architecture.
It has its own collections of over 50,000 drawings, 25,000 photographs, numerous models, letters and documents, sculptures, but every time you can have a new experience because the masterpieces exhibited changed and there are many different temporary exhibitions.