Museum of the Civilisations of Europe and the Mediterranean – in pictures

"Marseille is one of this year's European Capitals of Culture," says Observer architecture critic Rowan Moore, "and the occasion has been taken to make commercial opportunities for the local business community, while pursuing the well-worn idea that architectural icons can transform cities. Of these architectural projects, the Museum of the Civilisations of European and Mediterranean Culture sets out to be the grandest and most dazzling." Photograph: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images

"MuCEM's theme is vast, the millennia of beauties and horrors of the sea that stretches from Beirut to Gibraltar." Photograph: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images

"A 'ziggurat' of glittering ramps wraps around the cuboid containing the exhibition space, which is saturated with dappled shadows from a lacy screen in dark concrete." Photograph: Anne- Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

"There is a disconnect between the magnificence of the wrap, and the building it is meant to serve. The gallery block feels like an ordinary box, and although the project is in theory about porosity and flow, its internal circulation is cramped and stuttering." Photograph: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images

"There are the germs here of maybe 30 decent exhibitions. But they gain nothing from being piled together like 1970's crockery and alarm clocks in a brocante [flea market]." Photograph: Anne Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

"From the top of the museum a bridge flies across water to the historic Fort St Jean which also contains exhibition space, from where another bridge connects to the rest of the city, making an urban promenade which connects the waterfront to the raised part of the town." Photograph: Lisa Ricciotti/PR

"The bridges are impressive, long monoliths of quiet force." Photograph: Patrick Aventurier/Getty Images

People walk on June 3, 2013 in passageways of the MuCEM, the Museum of Civilisations from Europe and the Mediterranean in Marseille on the eve of its opening by the French President Photograph: Anne Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images

Walkway of the Museum of Civilisations of Europe and the Mediterranean Photograph: Lisa Ricciotti/PR

Museum of Civilisations of Europe and the Mediterranean Lisa Ricciotti Photograph: Lisa Ricciotti/PR