Madrid - sightseeing
Museums
Museo Nacional del Prado
The Prado museum is, without any doubt, one of the best in Europe. It was established in 1819 as the Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture, on the wake of the institution of the Louvre in Paris, showing 300 of a total of 1500 paintings from the personal collection of the king. The museum was nationalized in 1868, and at that time it already included works from other collections, and started acquiring works by artists and painters who had received national prizes. During the civil war of the thirties and the Second World War, it acquired more works, some of which came from the collection of the Escorial. Nowadays, it is one of the most visited museums in Europe, with works by Rubens, Velazquez, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, Bosch, Brueghel, Van Dyck, Goya, El Greco, Tintoretto. To learn more, visit the Prado website.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Established in 1993 when the Spanish State bought the collection of the eponymous family, which by then had become one of the richest private collections in the world, it now rivals the Prado in terms of both quality and quantity of the works exhibited. There are works from the 13th century to the 20th, including artists such as Fra Angelico, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Carpaccio, Caravaggio, Van Dyck, Dürer, Caravaggio, Rubens, Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Kandinsky, Monet, Mondrian, Bacon and Lichtenstein. For more info, visit the Museum’s beautiful site at www.museothyssen.org/.
Museo Municipal
Not very interesting, apart from a few Goyas. It mostly consists in pictures of kings, queens and members of the royal family. Go there only if you’re interested in the city of Madrid, which is presented complete with archaeological materials, drawings, stamps, furniture, coins, etc.
The Escorial
Located 49 kms North-West of Madrid, near the town of Escorial, "San Lorenzo de El Escorial" is a complex built by Felipe II in 1557, after winning the Battle of St. Quentin on Saint Lawrence, as a way to thank God and the Saint for the good luck awarded him. It is both a monastery and a palace, and a mausoleum of the Spanish Monarchy, since it hosts the tombs of many former kings and queens. Its structure in granite, its beautiful gardens and woods (in which there are several other interesting buildings), its magnificent Basilica and Monastery, make it well worth a visit.
Puerta del sol
Although Puerta means door, this is actually a square, and owes its name to the fact that in the past there used to be one of the major doors of the Madrid walls. It is now the tourist centre of Madrid, always overcrowded with people. Many will be looking for a plaque on the pavement, which indicates the zero or starting point from which the main streets of what used to be the Spanish Kingdom departed. It is not very easy to find, apparently. There are also a couple of statues, one of the Oso y el Madroño, the Bear and the Strawberry Tree, which are the symbols of the city, and the other of Carlos III; to the north of the square, there’s a series of building which form a half-circle surrounding that part of the square. They’re particularly beautiful at night.
Do you feel we missed something? E-mail us!
Some of the sites in our network: