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Caracas' Parque Centrale is a long concrete strip with a line of museums featuring art and culture. Parque Central is a long concrete strip filled with hundreds of street vendors, selling everything from pirated CDs to miracle herbs. This is the most easily identifiable part of city, thanks to the twin glass and concrete structures right above the Bellas Artes metro station. At 53 storeys, the octagonal Torre Oeste and Torre Este are the country's tallest buildings, though neither is open to the public.
It is Parque Central's museums, however, that draw you here. Just one block east from the Bellas Artes station lies the entrance to the sparsely decorated Parque Los Caobos, which contains a cluster of three museums and two cultural centers. The Galeria de Arte Nacional is connected to the Museo de Bellas Artes. While the former is a handsome Neoclassical edifice containing a vast collection of paintings and sculptures exclusively by national artists, the latter, an imposing concrete structure, primarily houses temporary exhibits of Venezuelan and international artists.
With the exception of a fascinating exhibit that helps trace the evolution of the Cubist movement, the Museo de Bellas Artes' small permanent collection does not warrant more than a quick look, but its roof has great views of the city.
If you are with children or have an active interest in natural sciences, it is certainly worth crossing the oval plaza in front of the museums to make for the well-designed Museo de Ciencias Naturales. The small space contains bones of crocodiles and saber-tooth tigers millions of years old.
A two-minute walk south brings you to the 1973 Teatro Teresa Carreño, the third-largest theatre in Latin America and the sixth largest in the world. A great source of pride to residents, it is a daunting concrete and black-glass structure counterbalanced by extensive greenery in the open spaces that surround the theatre.
Across the road is the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, the gem of the Parque Central area. A five-storey museum, it houses works by Venezuelans, such as Jesús Soto, a kinetic artist of some world renown, as well as international artists. Take a few hours to see the museum whose highlights include Matisse's Odalisque in Pants, Miró's Ski Lesson, Chagall's Night Carnival as well as a number of works by Picasso. Further west, next to the Torre Oeste, is the Museo de los Niños a highly interactive, and quite extensive, children's museum.
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