Museums & Art in Madrid
From the Prado's Old Masters to Reina Sofía's Guernica — Madrid's Golden Triangle of Art and beyond.
must seeMuseo del Prado
Spain's national gallery holds the deepest collection of European painting anywhere, anchored by Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Black Paintings, and Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.
must seeReina Sofía National Art Centre
Spain's national museum of 20th-century art, built around Picasso's Guernica, with deep holdings of Dalí, Miró, and the Spanish avant-garde.
must seeThyssen-Bornemisza Museum
A single private collection spanning 700 years of Western art, from 13th-century Italian gold-ground panels to Pop Art, completing Madrid's Golden Triangle.
Sorolla Museum
The preserved home, garden, and light-filled studio of Spanish Impressionist Joaquín Sorolla, one of Madrid's most charming and least crowded museums.
National Archaeological Museum (MAN)
Spain's vast archaeology collection, from Iberian sculpture to Islamic and medieval Christian artifacts, housed beside Plaza de Colón and largely bypassed by tourists.
Museo Cerralbo
A 19th-century aristocrat's private mansion preserved exactly as he furnished it, packed with paintings, tapestries, armor, and a mirrored ballroom, near Plaza de España.
iconicCaixaForum Madrid
A former power station reimagined as a suspended cast-iron cultural center, famous for Patrick Blanc's living vertical garden wall and rotating contemporary exhibitions.
Museum of Romanticism
An intimate palace museum recreating the daily life, decorative arts, and painting of Spain's Romantic era, tucked into a quiet Malasaña-adjacent street.
Museo Lázaro Galdiano
A publisher's private art collection of some 12,600 pieces, from Bosch and Goya to English portraiture, housed in his own Salamanca-district palace.
freeErmita de San Antonio de la Florida
A small neoclassical chapel with a ceiling fully frescoed by Francisco Goya in 1798, who is also buried here — free to visit and largely overlooked by tourists.