The Dalí Museum Is Basically a Surrealist Mural You Can Walk Inside

If you love public art that messes with your sense of scale and reality, the Salvador Dalí Museum's building will scratch that itch before you've even bought a ticket. The current structure opened January 11, 2011, replacing a smaller original museum that had operated since 1982 after community leaders worked to bring the Morse family's Dalí collection to St. Petersburg.

A treasure box with a bubble growing out of it

Architect Yann Weymouth of HOK designed the building as two visually distinct pieces: a simple rectangular concrete block with 18-inch-thick, hurricane-rated walls (nicknamed the "Treasure Box"), and bursting out of it, a free-form geodesic glass structure nicknamed the "Enigma." The Enigma is made of 1,062 triangular panes of glass and stands 75 feet tall at its peak — explicitly designed as a 21st-century nod to the dome on Dalí's own museum in Figueres, Spain.

A concrete fortress wearing a glass explosion like a hat.

Built to survive a hurricane and still look like a dream

None of this was just for show. Because the museum sits directly on St. Petersburg's downtown waterfront, the design had to withstand Category 5 hurricane winds and storm surge while still protecting roughly 2,000 priceless works — reportedly the most comprehensive Dalí collection outside of Spain. Engineering coverage of the build noted the Enigma's 1,062 glass panes are all slightly different sizes, cut to handle different structural forces across its organic, non-repeating shape.

Inside, the geometry keeps going: a poured-in-place, sculptural concrete spiral staircase winds up through the atrium, a nod to Dalí's own fascination with spirals and the double-helix structure of DNA.

Recognition beyond the art world

The building has picked up praise that has nothing to do with Dalí's paintings: the American Institute of Architects placed it on its "Florida Architecture of the Last 100 Years" list, and outlets like Flavorwire and AOL Travel have separately named it among buildings to see before you die.

What's inside the walls it protects

Once you get past the architecture, the museum's Avant-garden includes a Mathematical Garden meant to let visitors experience the relationship between math and nature — a fitting complement to an artist obsessed with geometry and optical illusion, from the melting clocks of "The Persistence of Memory" to the double image in "The Hallucinogenic Toreador."