Museums in Madrid

Spain's premier archaeology museum spans two million years of human history on the Iberian Peninsula, housed in an imposing 19th-century palace sharing its grand entrance with the National Library.

The Museo del Prado is one of the world's supreme art museums, housing the single richest collection of European painting anywhere on earth. Its 8,000+ works span the 12th to early 20th centuries, with unrivalled holdings of Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, and Bosch.

The former mansion and studio of Valencian Impressionist painter Joaquín Sorolla is one of Madrid's most intimate and enchanting museum experiences. The house is preserved exactly as he left it, filled with his sun-drenched Mediterranean canvases.

Spain's national museum of 20th-century art occupies a converted 18th-century hospital expanded by Jean Nouvel's striking glass-and-steel extension. It is home to one of the most powerful anti-war paintings ever created.

The Thyssen completes Madrid's Golden Triangle of Art, filling the gaps left by the Prado and Reina Sofía. Housed in the elegant 18th-century Villahermosa Palace, it offers a comprehensive survey of Western art from the 13th century to the late 20th century.

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando is one of Madrid's most undervisited treasures—a world-class art collection hidden in a quiet 18th-century building on Calle de Alcalá, steps from Puerta del Sol.

The Museo de América is the only museum in Europe dedicated exclusively to the art, archaeology, and ethnography of the Americas, covering pre-Columbian civilizations through the colonial and modern eras.

Tucked inside the Spanish Navy headquarters on the Paseo del Prado, the Naval Museum is a hidden treasure trove of maritime exploration spanning Spain's Age of Discovery.

Housed in a beautifully decorated early 20th-century mansion, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano contains an extraordinary private collection amassed by the financier and publisher José Lázaro Galdiano across 70 years of compulsive collecting.

The Museo Cerralbo is one of Madrid's best-kept secrets—a lavish 19th-century aristocratic mansion preserved intact, where every room overflows with paintings, suits of armour, porcelain, and archaeological curiosities.

A delightful small palace-museum recreating the atmosphere and lifestyle of 19th-century Romantic-era Madrid, with period rooms furnished exactly as a wealthy Spanish household would have lived in the 1830s–1860s.