Madrid Museums Guide: the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen

Madrid's three big art museums sit within about a kilometre of each other along the Paseo del Prado, an area known as the Paseo del Arte. Together they cover European painting from the Middle Ages to Picasso and beyond. Few people can take in more than one a day, and trying to do all three in one go is the classic first-visit mistake.

The Prado

The old Spanish royal collection, and the reason many people come to Madrid. You could spend days here, so go in with a plan:

1. Velázquez. The central rooms of the main floor, with Las Meninas, the painting that seems to turn the viewer into its subject.
2. Goya. His royal portraits upstairs, then the Black Paintings on the ground floor, dark scenes he painted on the walls of his own house late in life.
3. El Greco. His elongated, flickering saints and portraits, painted in Toledo.
4. Bosch. The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych crowded with strange detail. Arrive early or expect to look over shoulders.
5. Titian and Rubens. The Spanish kings collected both, and the rooms show it.

Three hours covers the highlights. Buy a timed ticket online and enter by the Goya or Jerónimos entrance. The Prado is free for the last two hours of each day, but the queue starts long before, and two hours isn't enough to see much. We'd pay and take the morning.

The Reina Sofía

Spain's national museum of modern art, in a former hospital next to Atocha station. Most visitors come for Guernica, Picasso's huge black, white and grey painting of the bombing of the Basque town in 1937, shown with the studies he made for it. Allow time for the rooms around it, too: Dalí, Miró and the art of the Spanish Civil War. The glass lifts on the outside of the old building give a view over the rooftops.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza

A private collection bought by the Spanish state, and the one that fills the gaps between the other two: early Italian and Dutch painting, the Impressionists, German Expressionism and American painters such as Edward Hopper. It's the easiest of the three to see in two hours, and usually the least crowded.

How to fit them in

The Paseo del Arte card gives one visit to each museum at a discount and is valid for a year. Check the official websites for the free entry slots at the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen, and for closing days. A sensible split is the Prado on one morning and the Reina Sofía or the Thyssen on another, with lunch in the Barrio de las Letras in between, as in our 3-day itinerary.

The Museo Sorolla, a painter's house and garden in Chamberí, closed in October 2024 for a renovation and expansion, with reopening planned for 2026. Check its website before planning around it.