Medina Al Zahra Museum. Cordoba, Spain

There is architecture that owes itself to a metaphor: it agrees with a concept that if not explained literally, makes it easier to under-stand. This is what happens with the Museum and Institutional Head-quarters in Medina Azahara (1998- 2008) by Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano. Already in the memorandum of competition, the architects proposed the metaphor of the archaeological excavation: they are not inspired to construct a building but to discover it, with luck, underground. Like the palace-city ruin, their project wants to be a discovery: they are not trying to build it; they are on the way to encounter it, interpreting the traces of time on the site.