The cultural offer is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Europe, and Madrid’s museums are among the most important in the world.
Collections of decorative arts, historic houses, archaeology, ethnography, anthropology, etc. narrate the history of Spain and also of the city.
Here we leave you a wide selection of museums, from the most emblematic to the lesser known, and some recommended visits for your second visit to Madrid, where you will find links to the websites of each one so that you can expand information or verify data that may have changed.
The Madrid Museums and the Art Triangle
Madrid has its particular triangle, the so-called Art Triangle, and is recognized for concentrating the most important artistic heritage in Spain: the Prado Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and the Reina Sofia Museum.
Prado Museum
It is the most important museum in the world in terms of European painting, especially from the 16th to the 19th centuries.
Among its innumerable merits is having extensive collections of painters such as Velázquez, Murillo, Goya, or El Bosco.
museum website.
Reina Sofia Museum
It brings together a collection of works from the 20th century and pieces of contemporary art: surrealist, cubist, and expressionist art with artists such as Picasso, Dalí, Miró, Gris, Duchamp, or Picasso.
museum website
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
It has a vast and exclusive collection of more than a thousand pieces belonging to different periods, styles, and authors, including foreign artists who are generally absent in other galleries in Spain. Holbein, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Degas, and Picasso are some exponents whose works can be admired in their rooms.
museum website
Second line of museums of interest are
Bellas Artes Museum
It has an important heritage of paintings, including 13 works by Goya and masterpieces of Spanish, Italian, and Flemish art, as well as sculptures, drawings, and decorative pieces by artists such as Goya, Zurbarán, Mengs, Van Loo, Gray, Sorolla, etc.
In addition to the gallery, you can also visit the archive library and the National Archives, both located in the same building.
museum website
Madrid History Museum
Primordial among the museums of Madrid and located in one of the great Baroque buildings of Madrid, the old Hospice of San Fernando, exhibits through models, drawings, paintings, cartography, porcelain, etc., the historical evolution of Madrid since its election as capital of the monarchy by Philip II in 1561 to the present.
museum website
Ermita of San Antonio de la Florida
Considered as the “Sixtine Chapel of Madrid”.
In it, some impressive frescoes made by Goya at the end of the 18th century stand out, and it is also a commemorative pantheon of the painter.
museum website
Public Art Museum or Outdoor Sculpture Museum
This open-air museum, very close to our office, under the Eduardo Dato bridge, brings together a collection of the different tendencies of Spanish abstract sculpture after the civil war.
museum website
Museum-houses-palaces of Madrid
There are other museums located in old palaces and houses with historical relevance and whose walls witnessed the lives of great artists, offering an intimate journey through their history.
National Museum of Decorative Arts
The perfect complement to the house museums, it has sixty rooms dedicated to daily life in the past and present, presenting a journey through the history of the decorative arts of the East and West.
The collection includes more than 1,600 pieces of ornamentation: furniture, ceramics, jewelry, gold and silver, glass, textiles, etc., both of Spanish and foreign origin, belonging to the 15th to 19th centuries, among which a Valencian kitchen from the 18th century stands out, covered by 1,536 tiles showing scenes of everyday life.
museum website
Sorolla Museum
The mansion house in which the painter Joaquín Sorolla lived preserves the most important collection of the artist’s works as well as objects that he gathered during his life.
museum website
Cerralbo Museum
A jewel in the form of a house palace, located in the Princesa Area, it is one of the few examples in Madrid that shows the original decorative setting of an aristocratic residence from the end of the 19th century.
It exhibits a private collection gathered by the XVII Marquis of Cerralbo, Don Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, a politician, archaeologist, and passionate collector.
museum website
Lazaro Galdiano Museum
It shows the magnificent art collection of more than 12,500 pieces that the illustrious publisher José Lázaro Galdiano put together, in which he lived.
It includes an excellent art gallery with works by El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, El Bosco, or Constable, among others, as well as sculpture, ivory, jewelry, miniatures, glass, and sumptuary arts dated between the 4th century BC and the beginning of the 20th. museum website
Museum of Romanticism
This mansion is one of the most original museums in Madrid, where the environments, rooms, and way of life of the wealthy upper bourgeoisie of Romantic Spain are recreated: all kinds of engravings, furniture, paintings, jewelry, miniatures, fans, and other objects of daily life from the 19th century.
museum website
Liria Palace
Also located in the Princesa area, the so-called “younger brother of the Royal Palace,” is a large 18th-century building, the residence of the House of Alba, which houses paintings of extraordinary value.
Among its most outstanding pieces stands out a gallery of portraits of the successive dukes, painted by masters such as Amberger, Titian, Louis-Michel Van Loo, Mengs, Goya, Federico de Madrazo, Sorolla and Daniel Vazquez Diaz. museum website
Velazquez Palace
Located in the Retiro Park, it was built in 1881 and inspired by the Crystal Palace in London.
It currently serves as the venue for temporary exhibitions at the Reina Sofía Art Center.
museum website
Other museums in Madrid
You can visit more educational museums, such as the National Museum of Anthropology, the National Archaeological Museum, and the Museum of Natural Sciences.
However, there are also specialized museums such as the Museum of America, which has a unique collection in Europe, made up of more than 25,000 pre-Columbian, ethnographic, and colonial art pieces, and the Costume Museum, the only museum in Madrid dedicated exclusively to clothing, which brings together a collection of historical clothing from the 16th century to the present.
There are many left, but we will end this post by mentioning others such as the Naval Museum on Paseo del Prado, the Geominero, and the Chamberí Station (or Andén 0 in Chamberí), the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, the San Isidro Museum and Caños del Peral Museum, in the Center, the Railway Museum, the Wax Museum and the Sweet Space Museum, in the ABC Serrano shopping center, among others.
Other things to see other than museums
We also recommend this plan to visit Madrid in 1 day and these tips for your first visit to Madrid or the 10 places of tourism in Madrid.
If you want to stay in Madrid
In this area we have apartments in the Centro area, the apartments in Retiro Park area and as a quieter and less touristy area, you can consider the apartments in Barrio Salamanca
For a short stay, we have short-term apartments next to the Golden Mile (Calle Serrano) and Paseo de la Castellana, in the Escultor Building. We also provide a list by category, corporate apartments or our apartments for students.