Museums
Madrid Museums
Start with the Madrid museums guide for ticket planning, free-entry advice, and a one-day route, then choose the collection that fits your interests.
Collections & Galleries
7 museums
Museo del Prado
One of the greatest art museums on earth — Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Black Paintings, and the single largest collection of Bosch anywhere, including the full triptych of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Anchor of Madrid's Golden Triangle of Art along Paseo del Prado.
Museo Reina Sofía
Spain's national museum of 20th-century art, built around a single overwhelming reason to visit: Picasso's Guernica, displayed in its own room exactly as the artist intended. The permanent collection beyond it covers Dalí, Miró, and the full arc of Spanish modernism.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
The third point of the Golden Triangle — a private collection so comprehensive it fills the historical gaps in the Prado and Reina Sofía, running chronologically from 13th-century Spanish panels through Impressionism to Pop Art in one continuous walk.
CaixaForum Madrid
A former power station reworked into a cast-iron-and-rusted-steel cultural centre, fronted by Patrick Blanc's 24-metre living vertical garden — one of the most photographed walls in the city. Rotating contemporary art and photography exhibitions inside, no permanent collection.
Museo Sorolla
The preserved house and garden studio of Joaquín Sorolla, Spain's master of Mediterranean light, left almost exactly as it was when he worked here — his brushes, easels, and a walled Andalusian-style garden he designed himself between paintings.
Museo Cerralbo
A 19th-century aristocrat's mansion frozen exactly as he left it in 1922 — a ballroom lined in gold leaf, armour, tapestries, and a small El Greco tucked among furniture he actually used. Madrid's answer to a life-sized dollhouse of the Belle Époque.
Museo de Historia de Madrid
The city's own biography in one building — a Baroque Pedro de Ribera doorway out front, and inside, a full-scale model of Madrid as it looked before the 19th-century expansion made it unrecognisable. Free, uncrowded, and genuinely useful for making sense of the rest of the city.
Museum Guides
1 guidesBook an Experience
Go Deeper With a Guide
A curator-led tour surfaces the stories the labels leave out — from Velázquez's Las Meninas at the Prado to Picasso's Guernica at the Reina Sofía.