Russia’s State Hermitage Museum is to open a satellite site on the Barcelona waterfront in 2019.

Designed by architect Íñigo Amézola, the US$43m (€38m, £29.2m) outpost, to be constructed in the Port of Barcelona, will cover 15,500sq m (166,000sq m) and will have seven galleries split over five storeys, as well as a large entrance hall, restaurant, cafeteria and auditorium.

Jorge Wagensburg, who will head up the outpost as its director, said in a statement that the new museum will not be part of the Hermitage “franchise,” but that there is an agreement with the St. Petersburg museum that will cover fifty years of art loans from the Hermitage to the new satellite from its collection of three million items.

The museum will create a continuous dialogue between science and art, highlighting both what unites and what distinguishes them, using modern scientific museology, a unique combination of parts, and [phenomenological] and museological metaphors,” said Wagensburg, who added that the museum will have a permanent collection changing every decade.

The museum is expected to receive as many as 500,000 visitors annually. Construction will start at the end of this year.