Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum

The MAC opened in 1996, designed by Oscar Niemeyer at eighty-eight, and it is a single white bowl sixteen metres high on a nine-metre central column, set on a rock above Boa Viagem beach with a red curved ramp winding up to the entrance. Niemeyer described it as a flower rising from the rock. The gallery floor is a ring around the core, with a continuous band of windows angled outward, so that walking the circuit gives a slow panorama of Guanabara Bay, Sugarloaf and the Rio skyline opposite - a design decision that visitors regularly note has the effect of upstaging the collection, which is Brazilian contemporary work largely from the Joao Sattamini holdings. The ferry crossing from Praca XV is the best approach.

What you actually see

• A bowl on a single column - sixteen metres high on a nine-metre stem.
• The red spiral ramp - the curved approach to the entrance.
• A continuous window band - the bay and Rio skyline through the gallery ring.
• Brazilian contemporary art - the Sattamini collection inside.

When to go

All year, closed Mondays. Two hours including the crossing.

Honest expectations

The collection is modest and many visitors come for the building alone. Exhibitions rotate and parts can be closed. The ferry is the pleasant way across but runs to a timetable; the bridge in traffic is slow. Photography rules inside vary by exhibition.

Nearby

Santa Cruz fortress is south at the bay mouth; Praca XV in Rio is across the water.