Matadero Madrid

Matadero Madrid

The Matadero is one of the most exciting developments to open in recent years. This former slaughterhouse-turned-arts centre presents a cutting-edge programme of visual and performing arts, cinema, music and design. Expect a regularly changing schedule of (often free) avant-garde exhibitions inside the centre’s industrial red-brick warehouses.

The old Madrid slaughterhouse, a set of neo-Mudejar style pavilions built at the beginning of the 20th century along the banks of the River Manzanares, is today a small city devoted to culture. Visitors will find the following spaces:

Matadero Madrid has become the city’s main cultural hub (17 February 2022)

Naves del Español en Matadero: a theatre complex catering for all types of performing and visual arts, as well as literature, philosophy, music and different forms of transmedia.
Casa del Lector: a large cultural centre whose programme casts a spotlight on readers and reading.

Central de Diseño: supported by the Madrid City Council and DIMAD (Madrid Designers’ Association), its aim is to promote and spread all things design.

Cineteca: the country’s first and only cinema whose programme focuses mainly on non-fiction.

AVAM Extension: is a space run by Madrid’s Visual Artists Association (in Spanish: Artistas Visuales Asociados de Madrid) that gives artists the opportunity to present their projects in an environment that welcomes the creation of new networks, making it a platform for visibility and exchange among creators.

Center for Artists in Residence: this space extends and reinforces the city’s selection of public residencies and work areas, providing Madrid’s creative sector with economic resources, tools and institutional guidance in an environment of creation and co-existence for local, national and international creators. The centre is located in Nave 16, a large, versatile and multi-purpose exhibition space of over 4,000 square metres. It can be used as a big exhibition hall, or a space for installations and activities all relating to the performing arts, as well as a set of smaller, independent spaces divided into up to three halls that can be used at the same time.

Intermediae: located at Nave 17, this initiative by the Madrid City Council Arts Department is intended to provide the city with a space for contemporary creative work, and to help foster contact between artists and the people of Madrid, with a view to finding and presenting alternative forms of expression, creation and thought.

Nave 0. Exhibitions: this former slaughterhouse’s cold storage unit now offers a wide range of creative installations, this is demonstrated by the projects displayed by artists inside these very walls.

Plaza y Calle Matadero: an outdoor multipurpose space devoted to a huge range of leisure and cultural activities.

MAD (Madrid Digital Arts) Immersive Experience Centre: a space for creation, experimentation and exhibitions at Matadero Madrid’s Nave 16. It opened on 4 March 2022 with KLIMT: The Immersive Experience.

Medialab Matadero: located at Nave 17, this citizens’ laboratory functions as a meeting point for the production of open cultural projects.

Matadero Madrid also features two gastronomic areas: La Cantina and Café Naves.