Together with the Prado, the Reina Sofía Museum and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum form the so-called art triangle: three museums within ten minutes' walk of each other along the Paseo del Prado, together covering Western painting from the 13th century to today. Where the Prado stops, in the early 19th century, the other two begin. They are part of the Madrid guide.
The Reina Sofía Museum
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía occupies the former San Carlos general hospital, a large 18th-century building near Atocha station, recognisable by its external glass lifts. In 2005 Jean Nouvel added a modern wing with a large red roof. It is the national museum of modern and contemporary art.
Guernica
The reason everyone comes is Guernica by Pablo Picasso, in room 205.10 on the second floor. The Republican government commissioned Picasso to paint a work for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair; shortly before, on 26 April, the Nazi Condor Legion, allied to Franco, bombed the Basque town of Guernica. In a few weeks Picasso painted this canvas of almost eight metres in black, white and grey: the bull, the wounded horse, the mother with her dead child, the lamp. At the artist's wish the work stayed at MoMA in New York until Spain became a democracy again: it reached Madrid only in 1981. Around it are the studies and Dora Maar's photographs documenting its creation.
The rest of the collection
The permanent collection tells the story of Spanish and European 20th-century art: Salvador Dalí, with The Great Masturbator and Figure at a Window; Joan Miró; Juan Gris and Cubism; Surrealism with Buñuel and Magritte; art of the civil war and post-war years; Antoni Tàpies, Eduardo Chillida, Antonio Saura; through to contemporary installations. The museum also runs exhibitions in the Crystal Palace and the Velázquez Palace in the Retiro.
Information
- Open daily except Tuesdays, with long opening hours into the evening.
- Ticket about 12 euros; free entry in the last evening hours on weekdays and at midday on Sundays (current times on the museum's website).
- Photography is not allowed in front of Guernica.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
In the Villahermosa palace, opposite the Prado across the Neptune fountain, is one of the world's most extraordinary private museums. It is the collection of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, scion of a German-Hungarian industrial dynasty, who in 1993 sold it to the Spanish state on favourable terms, helped by his Spanish wife, former Miss Spain Carmen Cervera, whose own collection hangs in an adjoining wing.
The route
You visit from top to bottom, in chronological order:
- Second floor: Italian and Flemish primitives, Duccio, Jan van Eyck, Domenico Ghirlandaio's Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, Holbein's Portrait of Henry VIII, Carpaccio, Dürer, Caravaggio, Canaletto.
- First floor: 17th-century Dutch painting, the 19th century, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin, American landscape.
- Ground floor: 20th-century avant-gardes, German Expressionism, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Picasso, Hopper, Lichtenstein, Pop Art.
The Thyssen fills the Prado's gaps: Impressionism, the avant-gardes, American painting. It is smaller and less crowded, perfect for a morning.
Information
- Open daily; on Monday afternoons entry to the permanent collection is free.
- Full ticket around 14 euros; temporary exhibitions cost extra or with a single ticket.
- Pleasant café with a terrace in summer.
Tips for seeing all three
- Don't visit more than one big museum a day: you risk overload.
- The Paseo del Arte is the discounted combined ticket for the three museums, valid a year, with one entry to each.
- Free hours are handy but crowded and short: use them to go back to a specific work.
- Between museums, take a break in the Retiro or the Barrio de las Letras (see the Literary Quarter).
For all the city's other museums see Madrid museums.