AFTER YEARS of vicissitudes, the City of Culture of Galicia emerges like a fossil vieira  on the hillside of Mount Gaiás, in Santiago de Compostela. In the wake of the cultural projects of the 1990s, this work aimed at placing the city in the select circuits included in architecture catalogues. During its eventful initial phases it became an object of political confrontation. Its promoters defined it as visionary and daring, while its detractors described it as the megalomaniac mausoleum of Manuel Fraga after his long Galician presidency. In any case, two of the five pieces that make up the complex are already in use, two of them will be completed soon, and the last one’s fate is still uncertain.

The international competition was held in 1999, and architects such as Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel and Dominique Perrault, presented their proposals. Finally the winning project was that of Peter Eisenman and his concept of fusion between architecture and territory. Territory not only in geographical terms but also cultural, with an explicit allusion to the symbol of the pilgrims of St. James’ Way, the vieira, and to the purpose of the journey itself, to the city of Santiago and its zigzagging, narrow streets.

The Library of Galicia and the Archive are now open and in use, reflecting the intentions of this warped architecture, transformed into the culmination of the mountain with its elevations and depressions of stone cladding. Conceived as a city, its buildings are separated by streets that extend towards the countryside like the traditional paths or rueiros. In this way, a path separates the Archive, the southernmost piece of the complex, from the Library, and gives way to arcades that protect visitors from the rainy northern climate and guide them towards the accesses. The Archive, which will custody both public and private documents, develops mainly in two levels, one of access with exhibition spaces, and one for reading and cataloguing. The new library has six levels of bibliographic services and storage, and has become the central headquarters of the Galician network of libraries. The building will accommodate different spaces, like the large reading room of 1,600 square meters, special areas for researchers, an exhibitions area, classrooms and an assembly hall, protected by a roof of complex geometry that characterizes the spaces it covers.