Madrid

Madrid is one of the liveliest cities in the world – it’s alive all through the day, but it seems to become even livelier after midnight.

But partying is only one reason to visit Madrid. Many people come for the cultural delights on offer. Madrid has one of the finest museums in the world, on a par with the Louvre, the National Gallery and others: the Museo del Prado. In fact, the Prado Museum has just been refurbished and an extension has been added, so that even more top-class paintings can now be viewed.

The Prado Museum has an impressive collection of Spanish paintings from the “Golden Age” (Edad de Oro), including Velazquez, El Greco and Zurbaran, as well as other great Spanish artists, such as Goya, Murillo, etc. But it has much more than just Spanish art, and is excellently endowed with works of Tiziano, Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Rubens, van Dyck, Cranach, Dürer, Poussin and Rembrandt, among many others.
For most art lovers, this would already be more than enough to plan a visit to Madrid, but just across the road are a couple more museums that are just as well endowed in their own fields: the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.

The Reina Sofia Museum was conceived as the continuation (in time) of the Prado Museum: the works in the Prado collection go up to the year 1881 (the birth of Picasso), and the works in the Reina Sofia date from that year onwards. The museum has an excellent collection of Spanish modern and contemporary art, including, above all, Picasso (including his masterpiece Guernica, which merits a visit on its own), Dalí and Miró. International art is less well represented, although Georges Braques and Francis Bacon both have a number of works on show.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is a complement to the Prado and the Reina Sofia Museums, and is a manageable size. It is a pearl of a museum and is laid out in such a way that a visit can easily turn into a lesson in the history of European art from the 13th to the 20th centuries. Some of the most representative artists to be found here include van der Heyden, van Dyck, Holbein, Ghirlandaio, Rafael, Tiziano, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Ribera, Picasso, Miró, Pollock and Rothko. My own feeling is that visiting the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, after the Prado, is a little like listening to Mozart after listening to Beethoven.

We have concentrated on the great museums, but Madrid has much more to offer, so if you’re not the artistic type, don’t worry – you’ll find what you’re looking for and more! Our advice is: come to Madrid and have the time of your life!