Prado Museum

The Museo del Prado is Spain's national art museum and one of the most important art collections in the world, housing approximately 8,000 paintings, 700 sculptures, 5,000 prints, and 8,000 drawings in its catalogued holdings. The museum opened in November 1819 in the Villanueva Building, a Neoclassical structure designed by Juan de Villanueva that had originally been commissioned by Charles III as a natural sciences academy. The collection derives primarily from the Spanish royal collection assembled over three centuries of Habsburg and Bourbon patronage. The undisputed centrepiece is Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas (1656), which occupies its own room (Room 12) and depicts the Infanta Margarita with her court in a composition of extraordinary complexity and technical mastery. Francisco Goya is represented by the largest and most comprehensive collection of his work anywhere in the world, including large-format royal portraits, cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory, and the haunting Black Paintings (1819–1823), transferred from the walls of his farmhouse the Quinta del Sordo and displayed on the ground floor. Hieronymus Bosch's triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (circa 1505) is among the most discussed paintings in Western art and was a particular favourite of Philip II. The Flemish and Italian collections are equally formidable: works by Titian, Rubens, Raphael, Tintoretto, and Van Dyck fill large gallery halls across the ground and first floors. Rogier van der Weyden's The Descent from the Cross and El Greco's The Knight with His Hand on His Breast are among the most significant individual works outside the Velázquez and Goya rooms. The Jerónimos Building extension, designed by Rafael Moneo and opened in 2007, added major exhibition space and connects to the Villanueva Building via underground passages. The museum is considered the founding institution of the Paseo del Arte cultural corridor alongside the Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza.