Museo del Prado

What it is

The Prado is Spain's national painting museum, and the building it occupies was never meant to hold pictures. Juan de Villanueva designed it in 1785 for a Natural History Cabinet, on the orders of Charles III. The change of purpose came a generation later under his grandson Ferdinand VII, pushed by Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza, and the Royal Museum of Paintings and Sculptures opened to the public in November 1819. It was renamed the National Museum of Paintings and Sculptures and finally the Museo Nacional del Prado.

What that origin means for a visitor is that the collection is a royal one rather than an encyclopaedic one. The Museum's own director describes it as a museum of painters rather than of paintings: the Spanish crown bought deeply from a handful of favourites instead of broadly across the field, so Bosch, Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Velazquez and Goya are each held in quantity, sometimes more than a hundred works apiece, while whole periods are thin or missing. Seventeenth-century Dutch painting is one of the gaps. The narrative the galleries tell closes in 1881, the year Picasso was born; anything later in Spanish art is held elsewhere, chiefly at the Reina Sofia further down the same boulevard. The site has grown since 1819 — Rafael Moneo's extension wrapped the Museum around the Church of the Jeronimos, and the Casón del Buen Retiro and the Hall of Realms belong to it too.

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What's inside

The core is Spanish painting up to 1800, and the two rooms most visitors come for are Room 064, which holds Goya's The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, and the Velazquez rooms with Las Meninas. Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych has its own gallery, rebuilt around it. Beyond those, the Museum's published list of masterpieces runs through Fra Angelico's The Annunciation, Rogier van der Weyden's The Descent from the Cross, Dürer's Self-portrait of 1498, Raphael's The Cardinal, Titian's Emperor Charles V at Mühlberg, El Greco's The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest, Rubens's The Three Graces, Rembrandt's Judith at the Banquet of Holofernes, Ribera's Jacob's Dream and Tiepolo's The Immaculate Conception.

It is not only paintings. The collection also holds sculpture, decorative arts and works on paper from antiquity to the nineteenth century — the Roman group Orestes and Pylades sits on the Museum's masterpiece list alongside the canvases — and the north Ionic gallery on floor 1 was refurbished specifically to give sculpture and decorative arts more visibility. The earliest things in the building are medieval Spanish frescoes: the Hare Hunt from the hermitage of San Baudelio, painted around 1125, is shown in rooms that evoke the chapel it was cut out of. Tickets cover the temporary exhibitions as well as the permanent Collection, so whatever is running is already paid for.

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How long to spend

Allow three hours. The Prado publishes no recommended visit length, but it does publish three self-guided itineraries through the Collection — one hour, two hours and three hours — and counting the works in each is the closest thing to an official answer available. The one-hour route stops at 15 works. The two-hour route stops at 30. The three-hour route stops at 54, and that is the longest one the Museum offers, which is a fair signal that three hours is the sensible upper end for a first visit rather than a compromise.

The building will hold a visitor much longer than that. Monday to Saturday the galleries run 10:00 to 20:00, so ten hours are physically available; nobody should try. Three hours buys the Spanish rooms walked properly, Bosch, and one of the Italian or Flemish sequences. Ninety minutes buys the one-hour route with time to stand still in front of four or five things, which is a better visit than a rushed sweep of everything. The Museum's own guided tour of the masterpieces is scheduled at about 90 minutes, which is a useful calibration: that is what the highlights alone take when someone else is doing the navigating.

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Season and crowds

The Prado opens every day of the year except three: 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. Monday to Saturday it runs 10:00 to 20:00, and Sundays and public holidays 10:00 to 19:00. Three more dates run short at 10:00 to 14:00 — 6 January, 24 December and 31 December — and a visitor who has planned a Christmas Eve afternoon there will find the doors shut. Entry closes 30 minutes before closing time and the galleries are cleared 10 minutes before, so the last useful arrival on a weekday is 19:30 and on a Sunday 18:30.

The Museum publishes no busiest-months or quietest-hours figures, so this guide does not offer any. What it does publish is a free-admission window: the last two hours before closing, every day, give free access to the Collection subject to capacity. That is 18:00 to 20:00 Monday to Saturday and 17:00 to 19:00 on Sundays and holidays. Expect that window to be the fullest part of the day and to have a queue at the ticket office, since those tickets are issued there rather than online. A paid ticket in the morning is the calmer visit; the free window is the cheaper one.

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Tickets

General admission is €15 and covers both the Collection and the temporary exhibitions — there is no separate exhibition ticket to buy. Reduced admission is €7.50 and applies to people over 65, youth card holders and members of large families. Free admission covers, among others, under-18s, students aged 18 to 25, students over 25 on an arts degree in the Spanish education system, people with a disability level of 33% or more, the legally unemployed and active teaching staff. Free and reduced entry must be proved with official, valid, current documentation at the ticket office on the day.

A time pass is required: the date and hour are chosen at purchase, and the Museum asks visitors to come at the time on the pass. The ticket office sells directly from 09:45 until 30 minutes before closing, in cash or by card, but the Museum recommends buying online to avoid waiting. Add-ons are priced on top of admission: audio guide €5, guided visit €10, a copy of the Prado Guide brings the total to €24. A private visit between 09:00 and 10:00, before the Museum opens, is €50 per person with a minimum of 12 people and 72 hours' notice. The Art Walk pass at €32.80 covers one visit each to the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen-Bornemisza within a year.

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Getting there

No car is needed, and the Museum's own transport page makes the case better than any argument. The nearest bus stop, Museo del Prado – Botanical Garden, is 64 metres from the door and takes routes 001, 10, 14, 27, 34, 37, 45 and C03; Alfonso XII – Botanical Garden is 260 metres and Prado – Atocha 366 metres. On the Metro, Banco de España on line 2 is 650 metres away, Estación del Arte on line 1 is 800 metres, and Retiro is 1.3 km. Cercanías and Renfe trains reach Atocha at 1 km and Recoletos at 1.1 km. BiciMAD docks sit on Calle Espalter, Calle Jesús and Calle Almadén.

There are three entrances and they are not interchangeable. Jerónimos, on Calle Felipe IV, is for the temporary exhibitions and the Collection and gives priority access to people with reduced mobility, visitors with strollers, and ICOM, FAMP and American Friends members. Goya, also on Calle Felipe IV, holds the ticket offices and admits to the Collection. Murillo, on Plaza de Murillo, is for educational groups. From the airport the Museum lists Metro line 8 with a change to lines 4 and 2, Cercanías C1 or C10 to Recoletos or Atocha, bus line 203, or a taxi. Drivers are pointed at two car parks: Plaza de las Cortes and Montalbán 4.

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What to watch out for

The luggage rule is the one that strands people. Suitcases and bulky items larger than 40 by 40 centimetres are not allowed into the Museum at all, and locker capacity is explicitly described as limited, so a visitor arriving from Atocha with a wheeled case has a problem rather than an inconvenience. Scooters and bicycles are refused too, as are animals apart from authorised ones. The free cloakroom at every entrance takes coats and personal items that cannot go into the galleries, and it also lends wheelchairs and baby strollers at no charge.

Children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult. Groups need a reservation at least 24 hours ahead, and 72 hours for the private 09:00 to 10:00 slot. The time pass is a real constraint rather than a formality — the Museum asks visitors to arrive at the hour printed on it, not before. The last-two-hours free window is subject to capacity and those tickets are only issued at the ticket office, so a visitor counting on free entry should not treat it as guaranteed. And check the date: 6 January, 24 December and 31 December close at 14:00, which is four hours earlier than a normal Saturday and easy to miss when planning around a holiday.

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Photography

There is no photography at the Prado. The Museum's regulations state plainly that photography or filming in the galleries is not permitted, and unlike most large museums this is a blanket rule rather than a restriction on flash, tripods or particular rooms. A visitor cannot photograph Las Meninas, The Garden of Earthly Delights or The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, no matter how the camera is held. Plan for a visit spent looking rather than shooting, and expect staff to say so if a phone comes up.

That leaves the exterior, which is worth some attention. Villanueva's 1785 neoclassical front along the Paseo del Prado, the Goya and Velázquez statues outside their respective entrances, and the Jerónimos side where Moneo's extension meets the sixteenth-century church all photograph well from the street, and none of them are covered by the gallery rule. Afternoon light falls on the western Villanueva facade facing the boulevard; the Jerónimos side and the Plaza de Murillo entrance are better in the morning. For images of the works themselves, the Museum's own website publishes high-resolution photographs of the Collection with the room number for each, which is more useful for a trip record than anything a phone would have managed indoors.

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Where it is

Nearby

External links

• View on Wikidata