Prado Museum Tours and Activities

Madrid's Prado Museum can count itself in an elite handful of global art museums, with a collection as famed for its quality as it is for its quantity – particularly when it comes to the Renaissance and Classical paintings of Europe. Works by Hieronymous Bosch, Rubens, Botticelli, van Dyck and Rembrandt hold pride of place, in a collection that ranges from the 12th to 19th centuries. Take a count, and you'll find over 7,000 paintings, 1,000 sculptures, and 13,000 prints and drawings housed here. Naturally, the works of Spanish artistic genius feature most prominently, with the Prado having world's most comprehensive collections of artists like Goya and Diego de Velázquez.That rich painting heritage is enough to draw nearly three million art-lovers into its hushed galleries every year, making the Prado Museum one of the top-ten art museums in Europe. The building itself is enthroned in the regal surroundings of Jeronimos, a district which includes the Retiro Park and Madrid's two other art museums – the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen Bornemisza. Taken together, the three are known as the Golden Triangle of Art in Madrid.But glorious as Madrid is now, it was long seen as a cultural backwater, even among the Spanish. It was King Charles III, in the 18th century who decided his capital needed the more cultural heavyweights to compete with other European capitals. The Prado Museum was just one of a number of grand museums, galleries and palaces started by this reforming ruler. It was started by architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785, and was originally earmarked as a natural history museum. But war intervened, and the building wasn’t to open to the public until 1819. By then it had become the National Museum of Painting and Sculpture, and housed all the extraordinary riches of the Royal Collection of the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchies, built up over three centuries. In a collection of such scope and beauty, it is difficult to pick out the must-sees – but there are two the Prado is most famed for. First Las Meninas, by Velázquez, a deceptive painting whose complex genius is only unveiled slowly. And second, Goya's 'Black Paintings', dark and deeply personal paintings from a Spaniard considered the last of the Old Masters.