Madrid Travel Guide: Royal Tapestry Factory - Real Fábrica de Tapices

Goya created some of his freshest images as designs for Madrid's royal tapestry factory, founded in 1721. Originally it was in Chueca, but has been here since 1889. The hand-working skills and techniques used haven't changed, and are evident from the intricate, painstaking work carried out in its two sections - the carpet room and the tapestry room. Goya designs are a mainstay of the work that's done here today (the factory also maintains carpets for royal palaces and the Ritz as well as undertaking work for private clients). Guided tours are normally in Spanish, but if you call in advance an English-speaking guide can usually be arranged.

Address C/Fuenterrabía 2
Transport Metro Menéndez Pelayo.
Telephone 91 434 05 50
Open Guided tours only 10am-2pm Mon-Fri (last tour approx 1pm). Closed Aug.

Admission €3; €2 under-7s.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Velázquez Palace - Palacio de Velázquez

Built by Ricardo Velázquez for a mining exhibition in 1883, this pretty brick and tile building amid the trees of the Retiro is topped by large iron and glass vaults. Another Reina Sofía annexe, its galleries are wonderfully airy, and host very good temporary shows, including a recent one by Julian Schnabel. Contemporary dance has also featured recently.

Address Parque del Retiro
Transport Metro Retiro .
Telephone 91 573 62 45
Open Oct-Apr 10am-6pm Mon, Wed-Sat; 10am-4pm Sun. May-Sept 11am-8pm Mon, Wed-Sat; 11am-6pm Sun.

Admission free.

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Madrid travel Guide: Liria Palace - Palacio de Liria

This sober, neo-classical Liria palace, completed in 1783 and refurbished in the 1910s by Edwin Lutyens, is still very much the private property of Spain's premier aristocrat, the Duchess of Alba. The extraordinary collection of the Liria Palace includes work by Rembrandt, Palma Vecchio, Titian and Rubens, and one of the most important Goyas in private hands: his portrait of an earlier Duchess of Alba in red and white. The problem is, the current duchess has no need to open her palace to public view. Space on the Friday guided tours has to be requested several weeks in advance.

Address C/Princesa 20
Transport Metro Ventura Rodríguez.
Telephone 91 547 53 02 Fax 91 541 03 77
Open Guided tours 10am, 11am, noon Fri. Booking essential. Closed July-Oct.

Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Crystal Palace - Palacio de Cristal

Located in the centre of the Buen Retiro Park in central Madrid is an imposing glass palace modelled on London's Crystal Palace. It was built around 36 years after its London counterpart in 1887, and designed by the architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco who was responsible for another building in the park, the Palacio de Velázquez. He had also worked on such prestigious restoration projects as the Mezquita in Córdoba and the Alhambra in Granada.


The Palacio de Cristal, in the shape of a Greek cross, is made almost entirely of glass set in an iron framework on a brick base, which is decorated with ceramics. Its domed roofs makes the structure over 22 metres high. The glass palace was created in 1887 to house exotic flora and fauna as part of an exhibition on the Philippines, which was then still a Spanish colony. The exhibition spilled out into the park itself, and included a reconstruction of a native Philippino village. The palace is used today for contemporary art exhibitions organised through the Reina Sofia Museum.

In front of the entrance to the palace are steps leading down into the large artificial lake of the Retiro Park. The lake contains ducks. geese, black swans and terrapins, who will swim close to the steps, or you can hire boats on the lake for a closer view.

Only 19 years earlier, in 1868, the Parque del Buen Retiro had become the property of the City of Madrid. Prior to that, it had been the site of a Royal Palace and grounds. The original residence, built in 1632 for Philip IV, was located outside the official town limits as a royal retreat, but was destroyed during the Napoleonic period, and in the 17th century the grounds became a focus for festivals, bullfights, mock naval battles and theatre.

The park is set in around 130 hectares with a wide variety of over 15,000 trees, and is the venue for Madrid's annual book fair in May and June, where a long avenue of stalls present literature from all over the world in a variety of languages. There are a number of entrances to the park, the main one being in the Plaza de la Independencia, with other gates in the Calle de Alcala or Calle O'Donnell. The closest metro stations are Retiro and Banco de España.

Address Parque del Retiro
Transport Metro Retiro .
Telephone 91 574 66 14
Open Oct-Apr 10am-6pm Mon, Wed-Sat; 10am-4pm Sun. May-Sept 11am-8pm Mon, Wed-Sat; 11am-6pm Sun.

Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Astronomical Observatory - Observatorio Astronómico

One of Charles III's scientific institutions, the Observatorio was completed after his death in 1790. Beautifully proportioned, it is Madrid's finest neo-classical building, designed by Juan de Villanueva. It still contains a working telescope, which can only be seen by prior request. One room is also open to the public, but only on Fridays at the time of writing, while the building undergoes renovation.

Address C/Alfonso XII 3

Transport Metro Atocha .

Telephone 91 527 01 07

Open Guided tours 11am Fri.

Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Blind Museum - Museo Tiflológico

Owned and run by ONCE, the organisation for blind and partially sighted people, this special museum presents exhibitions of work by visually-impaired artists (the name comes from the Greek tiflos, sightless). Work here is intended to be touched, and is generally sculptural, three-dimensional, rich in texture and highly tactile. As well as temporary shows the museum has a large permanent collection of instruments devised to help the blind over the years, and a series of scale models of monuments from Spain and around the world.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum - Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza

When the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum opened in 1992, Madrid added the second point to its 'Golden Triangle'. The private collection of the late Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza is widely considered the most important in the world. Consisting of 775 paintings, it came to Madrid on loan, but in 1993 a purchase agreement was signed with the Spanish state. The Baron's decision to sell was doubtlessly influenced both by his wife, Carmen 'Tita' Cervera, a former Miss Spain, and by the offer to house the collection in the then-empty Palacio de Villahermosa, an early 19th-century edifice that was superbly reconverted by architect Rafael Moneo at fantastic costin into the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. Thanks to this revamp, involving terracotta-pink walls, marble floors and skylights, it is possible to view the works with near-perfect illumination in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum. In 2004, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum unveiled its new wing, in which some 200 paintings and sculptures from Carmen Cervera's own collection are on display.

The collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum was started by the Baron's father in the 1920s but was dispersed among his heirs after he died in 1947. The Baron bought back the paintings from his relatives and then extended the collection, buying up first Old Masters and then more contemporary works during the 1960s. The Baron's own home in Lugano, Switzerland, only had space to exhibit around 300 works, leading him to look for a larger home for the collection, most of which may now be seen in Madrid in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, though some paintings are housed in the MNAC museum in Barcelona.

The collection

Following the collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in chronological order gives you a lesson in Western art history. Beginning on the second floor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, you'll find 13th-century works, notably by the early Italians, such as Duccio di Buoninsegna's Christ and the Samaritan Woman. You finish the tour on the ground floor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, where Roy Lichtenstein's Woman in Bath is on show, or in the basement café, where Renato Guttuso's 1976 Caffè Greco hangs. Along the way in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, you'll have seen examples of all the major schools. The collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum partly complements the Prado and Reina Sofía's collections with substantial holdings of 17th-century Dutch painting, Impressionism, German Expressionism, Russian constructivism, geometric abstraction and Pop Art.

The Thyssen's detractors say the collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is a ragbag, catch-all gathering of every kind of style, put together with neither a sense of discrimination nor an eye for quality. However, one of the Thyssen's great attractions is that, while it is extraordinarily broad in scope, it is also recognisably a personal collection that reflects a distinctly individual taste, as seen in the wonderful room of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum dedicated to early portraits, with works by Antonello da Messina and Hans Memling. Equally quirky is the section on early North American painting, including a Presumed Portrait of George Washington's Cook by Gilbert Stuart and works by American artists who are rarely seen in Europe, among them Thomas Cole, Frederick Remington and Winslow Homer.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum also has its share of real masterpieces. Among the Old Masters, the works of Duccio, van Eyck and Petrus Christus stand out. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum's most famous painting, however, is the great Florentine master Domenico Ghirlandaio's idealised Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni (1488), in the Portrait Room. Two rooms further on in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is Vittore Carpaccio's allegorical Young Knight in a Landscape (1510), another gem. From among the masters of the Flemish School is the sublime Annunciation diptych by van Eyck, which is more like a three-dimensional sculptural relief than a painting. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is particularly strong in the German Renaissance, with many works by Cranach the Elder, a remarkable series of portraits by different artists and Albrecht Dürer's Jesus Among the Doctors, which portrays an idealised, almost effeminate Christ pressed upon by diabolical doctors.

From the later 16th century and baroque in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, there are superb paintings, such as Titian's Saint Jerome in the Wilderness, Mattia Preti's unsettling A Concert and Caravaggio's magnificent Saint Catherine of Alexandria (photo p81). In the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum there are also representative works by El Greco, Rubens, Guercino, Tintoretto and Jusepe Ribera, and a Bernini marble, Saint Sebastian.

The first floor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, below, begins with several rooms of 17th-century Dutch pictures - arguably the least interesting section of the Thyssen - followed by the most varied part of the museum, with such pieces as a sombre Easter Morning by Caspar David Friedrich; a Goya portrait of his friend, Asensio Juliá; a great selection of Impressionists (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Degas dancers, two beautiful and little-known van Goghs); and even Constable's 1824 The Lock - although not jumbled together, but carefully ordered and arranged. The collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is generally strong in German art of all kinds, with several rooms of Expressionists and powerful works by Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann and Blue Rider group artists Franz Marc and Kandinsky.

Also present, on the ground floor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, are some more familiar modern masters - Braque, Mondrian, Klee, Max Ernst and Picasso (in the shape of his 1911 Man with a Clarinet), among others. The last few rooms of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum focus on the USA, with a fabulous Georgia O'Keeffe, New York with Moon, plus Hotel Room by Edward Hopper and Robert Rauschenberg's 1963 Express. Large Interior, Paddington by Lucian Freud, an early David Hockney, In Memoriam Cecchino Bracci, and Ronald Kitaj's The Greek from Smyrna are also on display.

The Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza collection

This extension of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum opened in 2004 and incorporates two adjoining buildings: Nos.19 (the Palacio de Goyeneche) and 21 of the C/Marqués de Cubas. The new space of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum exhibits some 220 works of the 300 belonging to the private collection of 'Tita' Cervera, which she has ceded to the Spanish state for an 11-year period (though three were already up and the collection's future remains uncertain). In addition there is a huge area in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum for temporary shows and the library, restoration workshops and cafeteria have all been enlarged.

Access is from Room 18 on the second floor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which leads straight into rooms with early Italian and Flemish works by the likes of Luca Giordano, Jan Breughel and van Dyck, outstanding among which is the latter's Christ on the Cross. Moving on, you will enter a well-illuminated gallery of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum that contains views and landscapes by Canaletto, Constable, Corot, Guardi and van Gogh. In the next room of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum are 18th-century French and Italian painting and beyond that is the exhibition 'Naturalism and the Rural World', a selection of 19th-century paintings from North America. Room H contains the works of the early Impressionists, among them Degas, Pisarro, Monet, Renoir and Sisley. Downstairs on the first floor of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum you'll find work by North American Impressionists and other artists from the period of late Impressionism. Two rooms of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum are given over to Gauguin (the displays include his Mata Mua and Coming and Going, Martinique) and other post-Impressionists. From then on, you move into German Expressionists, Fauvists and the early 20th-century avant-garde movements. In addition, there is a Rodin Room of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, where one of the Baroness's four sculptures by the French artist is on show; the others are spread throughout the first floor.

Address Palacio de Villahermosa,
Paseo del Prado 8, Huertas & Santa Ana
Transport Metro Banco de España.
Telephone 91 369 01 51
Open Sept-mid July 10am-7pm Tue-Sun. Mid July-Aug 10am-11pm daily.

Admission €6; €4 concessions; free over-65s & under-12s. Paseo del Arte ticket €14.40 Temporary exhibitions €5; €4 concessions.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Sorolla Museum - Museo Sorolla

Often considered a neo-Impressionist, Valencia-born Joaquín Sorolla was really an exponent of 'luminism', the celebration of light. He was renowned for his iridescent, sun-drenched paintings, including portraits and family scenes at the beach and in gardens. Sorolla's leisured themes and greetings-card-esque (and indeed they are often used as such), aesthetic are easy to dismiss, but most find his luminous world at least a little seductive.

This delightful little Sorolla Museum, housed in the mansion built for the artist in 1910 to spend his latter years, has been recently restored and boasts 250 works. The works are exhibited on the main floor of the Sorolla Museum, in his former studio areas. The salon of the Sorolla Museum, dining room and breakfast room are furnished in their original state with the artist's eclectic decorative influence in evidence.

The garden of the Sorolla Museum, Moorish-inspired but with an Italianate pergola, is a delightful, peaceful oasis of calm, seemingly miles away from the roaring traffic outside.

Address Paseo del General Martínez Campos 37
Transport Metro Gregorio Marañón or Iglesia .
Telephone 91 310 15 84
Open 9.30am-3pm Tue, Thur, Fri; 9.30am-6pm Wed; 10am-3pm Sat, Sun.
Admission €2.40; €1.20 concessions. Free to all Sun.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Romanticism Museum - Museo del Romanticismo

Madrid's Romanticism Museum (El Museo del Romanticismo, previously called El Museo Romántico) was created by Don Benigno de la Vega-Inclán y Flaquer, the second Marquis of Vega Inclán (1858-1942), and was donated to the state 1921.


It is located in a characteristic 18th century palace in the heart of the city, housing Romanticism exhibits, including important pieces by the leading artists of the time. Other works on display include 19th century decorative objects, while the most famous masters featured in the collection include Goya, Federico de Madrazo, and Leonardo Alenza.

The museum captures the essence of Madrid's 19th century middle-class life through its furniture, china, pianos, and other household objects spread through several rooms.

Portraits of the royal family, military and political leaders, and of popular artists of the time decorate the walls. Some of those artists include Salvador Gutierrez, Ribera, and Esquivel.

Famous writers used to gather in the ballroom for literary evenings, and you may also visit the room dedicated to the life of romantic novelist Mariano Jose de Larra. Other writers who gathered here include Martinez Campos, Bequer, and Campoamor.

The New York Times had the following to say about this musem in an article published in December 2009:

"They can call it whatever they like", said Norberto Mateos, as he stood in a line of about 50 people patiently waiting to enter a Madrid museum earlier this month, but "it'll always be the Museo Romantico to us."

The Museo Romantico, an 85-year-old, small and eclectic museum devoted to the depiction of life in Madrid during the 19th century, and located at the edge of the trendy Chueca neighborhood, closed for refurbishment in 2001 and stayed closed until Dec. 3, when it reopened as the rebranded Museo del Romanticismo (Calle San Mateo 13; 34-91-448-1045; museoromanticismo.mcu.es).

For many Madrileños like Mr. Mateos, the name change - from Romantic Museum to Museum of Romanticism - had gone unnoticed. It was as if a dear friend who went away without a proper goodbye has returned. They eagerly turned up over the opening weekend to step back in time once again to the graciously gilded, tufted, tasseled and embroidered realm that awaited inside.

In line with Mr. Mateos was his friend José Luis Iglesias, who got to the core of the museum's appeal: "It's different from other museums where they just hang pictures on a wall. Here they create a complete environment." With nearly 1,400 objects ranging from grand pianos and wall-size oil paintings to diamond-studded stickpins and toy soldiers tucked into 26 rooms of an elegant neo-Classical palace, that "complete environment" is often summed up in Spanish with the word bombonera - a box of sweets.

Virtually every aspect of 19th-century life, both public and private, is presented in the room displays, from the formal ballroom to bedrooms and a nursery. While the museum layout is not much changed, the new installation packs in some 50 percent more objects - paintings, sculptures, furniture, painted fans, jewelry, carpets, coins, cameos and ceramics - than before.

Each room tells many stories about 19th-century life and taste. Among the novelties of the new galleries is the men's smoking room displaying the 19th-century taste for Orientalist paintings and exotic decorative arts like paisley wall hangings.

Overlapping with the reign of Queen Isabella II (1833-1868), the Romantic period in Spain witnessed a considerable relaxing of social codes and a flowering in the arts, literature and even the press, all of which had been stifled under her father, the absolutist monarch Ferdinand VII. An Empire-style toilet, its seat upholstered in yellow velvet, which Ferdinand had installed for his personal use in the Prado Museum, lends royal prestige.

One of the museum's biggest draws is the portrait of the 19th-century essayist Mariano José de Larra, who became the ultimate Romantic hero when he killed himself in 1837 over a love gone wrong. On the wall opposite his portrait hang Leonardo Alenza's satirical paintings of so-called romantic suicides, including one showing a comically forlorn man about to throw himself off a cliff.

The Museo Romantico opened in 1924 with a major donation by the Marqués de la Vega-Inclán, a prescient art collector and businessman who was also the force behind the first Paradores, the state-run network of hotels in historic sites. This core of paintings, furniture and decorative arts has been expanded over the years with purchases and donations, some from the heirs of writers, artists and other key figures of the era.

While the 19th century is the museum's star attraction, the 21st century is now thankfully present in the form of audio guides and touch-screen monitors explaining Spanish history. An elegant tearoom, overlooking a lushly planted patio, will open in the coming months on the ground floor.

Address C/San Mateo 13
Transport Metro Tribunal .
Telephone 91 448 01 63

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Madrid Travel Guide: Navy Museum - Museo Naval

Madrid's naval museum contains examples of the booty accumulated by Columbus and other early mariners during Spain's period of maritime expansion and an array of navigational instruments, muskets, guns and naval war paintings.

Glass displays in the naval museum enclose primitive weapons, some of which, like the swords lined with sharks' teeth from the Gilbert Islands, promise greater damage than their Western counterparts. The most impressive room in the naval museum is dominated by a huge mural-map that traces the routes taken by Spain's intrepid explorers; in front of it are two equally impressive 17th-century giant globes. This same room also holds the naval museum's most valuable possession: the first known map of the Americas by a European - a parchment paper drawing by royal cartographer Juan de la Cosa believed to have been made for Ferdinand and Isabella in 1500. Worth a look also is the room of the naval museum occupied by items salvaged in 1991-3 from the Nao San Diego, which sank in the China Seas in 1600.

Address Paseo del Prado 5
Transport Metro Banco de España .
Open 10am-2pm Tue-Sun. Closed Aug.
Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: The Decorative Arts Museum - Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas

The Decorative Arts Museum houses more than 15,000 objets d'art, furniture and tapestries from all over Spain, plus many from China. One of the most prized rooms in the The Decorative Arts Museum is the fifth-floor tiled kitchen, painstakingly transferred from an 18th-century Valencian palace, whose 1,604 painted tiles depict a domestic scene, with a huddle of servants making hot chocolate.

Also of great interest is the second floor of the The Decorative Arts Museum, where the Spanish baroque pieces are concentrated, among them ceramics from Talavera and Teruel, textiles, gold and silver work and jewellery cases from the Tesoro del Delfín (Treasure of the Grand Dauphin), the rest of which is in the Prado. Elsewhere are 19th-century dolls' houses, antique fans, an ornate 16th-century four-poster bedstead and a Sèvres jug given to Queen Isabel II by Napoleon III.

Address C/Montalbán 12
Transport Metro Banco de España .
Telephone 91 532 64 99
Open 9.30am-3pm Tue-Sat; 10am-3pm Sun.

Admission €2.40; €1.20 students; free under-18s, over-65s.
Free to all Sun.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art - Museo Municipal de Arte Contemporáneo

The council's contemporary art collection covers painting and graphic work, along with sculpture, photography and drawing. The first floor relates works and artists of different generations and media to show the plurality of Madrid's art scene. Highlights include work by Eduardo Arroyo, Ouka Lele, Eduardo Úrculo, Jorge Oteiza and Eva Lootz.

Address C/Conde Duque 9
Transport Metro Noviciado .
Telephone 915 885 928
Open 10am-2pm, 5.30-9pm Tue-Sat; 10.30am-2.30pm Sun.

Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Museo Lázaro Galdiano

Museo Lázaro Galdiano, this unjustifiably little-known museum holds the extraordinarily eclectic collection of 15,000 paintings and objets d'art, covering 24 centuries, that was accumulated over 70 years by the financier and bibliophile José Lázaro Galdiano (1862-1947). The Museum Lázaro Galdiano's holdings include paintings by Goya and Bosch, an important collection of work from the Dutch and English schools, and some wonderful Renaissance ornamental metalwork. The four-storey mansion and the gardens of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum are a sight in themselves.

Address C/Serrano 122
Transport Metro Gregorio Marañón .
Telephone 91 561 60 84
Open 10am-4.30pm Mon, Wed-Sun.

Admission €4; €3 concessions. Free to all Wed.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Museum of Clothing - Museo del Traje

The Museum of Clothing is a must for those interested in any aspect of clothing. The collections of the Museum of Clothing comprise over 160,000 garments covering six centuries of Spanish fashion, though there are some much older items, among them fragments of Coptic cloth and Hispano-Muslim pieces.

The permanent exhibition of the Museum of Clothing shows up to 600 items at any one time, rotating them frequently both to protect them and to allow returning visitors to appreciate the breadth and diversity of the collection. It is arranged chronologically in the Museum of Clothing, in 14 spaces, among which are two outstanding monographic rooms, one covering regional costume, the other containing pieces by Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, son of the painter, whose creations were worn by the likes of Isadora Duncan.

Other rooms of the Museum of Clothing cover costume from the Enlightenment and the castizo (Madrid's working classes); early 19th-century French influences; Romanticism; belle époque, the avant-garde, post-Civil War fashion and the modern era.

A room of the Museum of Clothing is dedicated to the great couturier Balenciaga and another to Spanish haute couture. Visitors to the Museum of Clothing can learn about how clothes are made in 'didactic areas' and a further exhibition space shows temporary displays, the first showcasing a century of Vogue photography. Facilities include a reading/internet room, bookshop, and café-restaurant.

Address Avda Juan de Herrera 2
Transport Metro Moncloa.
Telephone 91 550 47 00
Open 9.30am-7pm Tue-Sat; 10am-3pm Sun.

Admission €3; €1.50 concessions.
Free to all 2.30-7pm Sat & all Sun.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Railway Museum - Museo del Ferrocarril

Housed in the elegant but disused Delicias station, with ironwork by Gustave Eiffel, Madrid's railway museum has an evocative collection of models, old locomotives, railway equipment and memorabilia. There is also a room dedicated to clocks, including the one that marked time when Spain's first ever train chugged from Barcelona to Mataró. Here in the Railway Museum, you can climb on the trains, have a drink in an old restaurant car or watch film footage of Spanish railways. This great Railway Museum for kids offers occasional theatre performances, a bring-and-buy market for model train enthusiasts, and more. The Railway Museum is located about 100 yards off the main road, behind the national railway offices.

Address Paseo de las Delicias 61

Transport Metro Delicias .

Telephone 902 22 88 22

Open 10am-3pm Tue-Sun. Closed Aug.

Admission €3.50; €2 concessions. Free to all Sat

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Madrid Travel Guide: National Library Museum - Museo del Biblioteca Nacional

With over three million volumes, Spain's national library and the National Library Museum has been called the 'Prado of paper'. Among the wealth of printed matter in the National Library Museum there is every work published in Spain since 1716, Greek papyri, Arab, Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, Nebrija's first Spanish grammar, bibles, and drawings by Goya, Velázquez, Rembrandt and many others.

Given the precious and fragile nature of the texts, access to the National Library Museum was limited to scholars, but in 1996 the administration opened the National Library Museum to allow the public a glimpse of the library's riches. The displays in the National Library Museum are conceived as interactive, steering visitors through bibliographical history via multimedia applications including laser shows, videos and holographs.

Address Biblioteca Nacional, Paseo de Recoletos 20
Transport Metro Colón .
Telephone 91 580 77 72
Open 10am-8pm Tue-Sat; 10am-1pm Sun.

Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Museum of the Origins - Museo De Los Origenes

Dedicated to the city's patron saint, the well-digger and labourer San Isidro, the Museum of the Origins sits on the spot where he supposedly lived and performed one of his most famous miracles: when his son, Illán, fell into a well, Isidro made the water rise and thus was able to rescue the unfortunate lad. The well - or a well, anyway - is preserved inside the Museum of the Origins, as is the chapel built in 1663 on the spot where Isidro allegedly died. According to legend, he was originally buried here too. This is, then, a Museum of the Origins that deals in legends as much as in solid artefacts, and the current material on show is a little limited.

More interesting are the finds from local archaeological digs, formerly kept in the Museo Municipal and now in the basement of the Museum of the Origins. They include items from lower-Palaeolithic settlements in the area, as well as artefacts from the Roman villas along the Manzanares, from the Muslim era.

Address Plaza de San Andrés 2
Transport Metro La Latina.
Telephone 91 366 74 15
Open Sept-July 9.30am-8pm Tue-Fri; 10am-2pm Sat, Sun. Aug 9.30am-3pm Tue-Fri; 10am-2pm Sat, Sun.

Admission free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

This undervisited museum, Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, is in fact one of Madrid's most important and oldest permanent artistic institutions (it was founded in 1794). The eclectic collection of the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando is partly made up of works of varying quality donated by aspiring members in order to gain admission to the academy.

The Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando's greatest possessions, though, are its 13 works by Goya, an important figure in the early years of the Academia. They include two major self-portraits; a portrait of his friend, the playwright Moratín; a portrait of Charles IV's hated minister Godoy; and the Burial of the Sardine, a carnival scene that foreshadows his later, darker works. Another of the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando's most prized possessions is the Italian mannerist Giuseppe Arcimboldo's Spring, a playful, surrealistic portrait of a man made up entirely of flowers. It was one of a series on the four seasons painted for Ferdinand I of Austria in 1563: Summer and Winter are still in Vienna, but the whereabouts of Autumn is unknown.

In the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, there are also important portraits by Velázquez and Rubens, and several paintings by Zurbarán. Among the later works of the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the best known are some Picasso engravings and a Juan Gris; the most surprising are the colourful fantasies of Múñoz Degrain and the De Chirico-esque work of Julio Romero de Torres. While in the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, look out too for Leandro Bassano's superb La Riva degli Schiavoni.

The Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando also has a valuable collection of plans and drawings, including those of Prado architect Juan de Villanueva, and rare books. In the same building of the Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando is the Calcografía Nacional, a similarly priceless collection and archive of engraving and fine printing, which has many of the original plates for the great etching series of Goya.

Address C/Alcalá 13
Transport Metro Sevilla or Sol .
Telephone 91 524 08 83
Open 10am-2pm Mon, Sat, Sun; 9am-7pm Tue-Fri. Calcografía Nacional 9-2.30pm Mon-Fri. Temporary exhibitions 10am-2pm, 5-8pm Tue-Fri; 10am-2pm Sat, Sun.
Admission €3; €1.50 students; free under-18s, over-65s.
Free to all Wed. Calcografía Nacional free.

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Madrid Travel Guide: History Museum - Museo de Historia

The building of the History Museum boasts an exuberantly ornate entrance by Pedro de Ribera, one of the finest examples of baroque architecture in Madrid, and worth seeing in itself.

The City Council is currently achieving the last remodelling phase on the Museo Municipal, keeping in mind two objectives: to restore and to recover one of the best examples of Madrid´s baroque art, the old Hospicio, and to put into order and give a boost to one of the city´s main museums.


The objectives of the project

Madrid City Council continues to renovate the Municipal Museum, in order to restore it and recover one of the best examples of Madrid baroque architecture, while putting in order and giving a boost to one of the capital’s main museums. On the basis of these two ideas, in July 2002 renovation work began on this historic building, built by Pedro Ribera and which has been a National Monument since 1919.

Given the interest value of its stock, which comprises over 60,000 pieces, and its value to the historical memory of Madrid, the Municipal Government has kept the museum’s activity running throughout the renovation works. When the process concludes, the Museo Municipal will have become firmly established as a fundamental element of cultural tourism in Madrid.

The architectural renovation process

The keynote of this integral renovation process, directed by architect Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade, is the scrupulous respect paid to the architectural and artistic values. On the one hand, the works have addressed the problems that afflicted the old building and the lack of air conditioning, circulation, illumination and security. On the other hand, architectural barriers have been eliminated to improve accessibility to this municipal facility.

Meanwhile, these works will also enable more exhibition spaces and new services – such as gathering areas, rooms for didactic activities or research, a library, restoration and photography workshops, or visitable warehouses – to be made available to visitors, all of which are fitted out with the most advanced equipment.

The first phase of the work began in July 2002 and ended in October 2003. It consisted of the remodelling of wrought iron items, the provisional installation of offices and store rooms, and the selection and preparation for display of certain items from the stock, for these to be visited by the public.

The second phase involves adapting the posterior space of the building into an office area.

The third and final phase includes the restoration of the façade and the remodelling of the whole perimeter.

Computerisation of the collections

The project goes beyond the mere architectural remodelling. It goes hand in hand with the wish of the municipal Government to give this museum, created in 1929, a boost through a thorough reorganisation of the collections and permanent exhibition.

With this spirit the museum will revitalise the management of the stock it holds within, and boost the circulation of this and the activities it implements, improving methods in the areas of structure and information, as well as in signage, illumination, models and multimedia technology.

Madrid´s historical memory

The museum holds around 60,000 pieces, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, porcelain, coins and postcards. All of these items have notable aesthetic value, though the historic significance they carry is of greater importance.

The museum’s collection is one of the best examples of the historic evolution of Madrid, and offers a global vision of the arts, industries, daily life and customs of its inhabitants since 1561, when the city was chosen to be the capital of Spain, to the present day. Citizens can see for themselves by visiting the exhibition Madriziudad ¿Hemos cambiado en 4 siglos? (MadridCity. Have we changed over the last 4 centuries?), on display in the museum chapel, which constitutes an important ‘rehearsal’ for the future permanent exhibition.

Address C/Fuencarral 78
Transport Metro Tribunal .
Telephone 91 701 18 63
Open Sept-July 9.30am-8pm Tue-Fri; 10am-2pm Sat, Sun. Aug 9.30am-2.30pm Tue-Fri; 10am-2pm Sat, Sun.

Admission free.

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