The Prado Museum in Madrid: Masterpieces Worth Slowing Down For

The Prado Museum in Madrid holds one of the great collections of European painting, gathered over three centuries by the kings of Spain, and it is easy to come away from it exhausted, having seen everything and remembered little. The answer is to see less, and to see it slowly: a dozen paintings by Velázquez, Goya, El Greco and Bosch, looked at properly, will stay with you far longer than a march through every room. This guide explains how the museum came to be, which works to put at the top of your list, a short route through them, and how to pace the visit so that you leave wanting more. It is also the focus of a day on our Small Group Tour of Spain & Portugal, which spends four nights in Madrid.

From royal collection to public museum

The Prado’s building was not designed as an art gallery. In 1785 Charles III commissioned the architect Juan de Villanueva to build a Natural History Cabinet on the Paseo del Prado, the tree-lined avenue he was turning into a showcase of science and learning on the eastern edge of Madrid. War with Napoleon interrupted the work, and it was Ferdinand VII, encouraged by his queen, Maria Isabel of Braganza, who decided that the finished building should house the royal collection of paintings instead. The Royal Museum opened to the public in November 1819, with 311 paintings in its first catalogue.

Those paintings were the fruit of three centuries of royal collecting. Charles V and his son Philip II bought and commissioned works by Titian and other Venetian painters, Philip II acquired the strange visions of Hieronymus Bosch, and Philip IV, the patron of Velázquez, filled his palaces with Rubens and Flemish painting. That is why the Prado is so strong in Spanish, Venetian and Flemish art, and comparatively thin in some other schools: it reflects the tastes of particular kings. Today the collection numbers many thousands of works, of which only a fraction is on display at any time.

The paintings to slow down for at the Prado Museum, Madrid

With limited time and energy, it pays to choose. These are the works most visitors come for, and the ones that most repay standing still.

Velázquez: Las Meninas

Diego Velázquez was court painter to Philip IV, and the Prado holds the largest collection of his work. Las Meninas, painted in 1656, shows the young Infanta Margarita surrounded by her maids of honour, two dwarfs, a dog and the painter himself at his easel, while the king and queen appear only as reflections in a mirror at the back of the room. The more you look, the less certain you are of who is watching whom. Give it time, and step back: the painting was made to be seen from across a room. Nearby hang Velázquez’s royal portraits and his scenes of court life, and they are worth a slow walk of their own.

Goya: from court painter to the Black Paintings

Francisco de Goya is the other giant of the collection, and the Prado lets you follow his whole career. His portrait of The Family of Charles IV, painted in 1800, looks at first like a conventional court picture and on a second glance seems close to merciless. The Third of May 1808, painted in 1814, shows the execution of Madrid citizens by French troops after the uprising against Napoleon’s army. Then come the Black Paintings, which Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house outside Madrid in old age. They were later transferred to canvas, given to the museum in 1881, and remain among the most unsettling works of art in Europe.

El Greco and the Venetians

Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco, trained in Crete and Venice before settling in Toledo, and his long-limbed, flickering saints look like no one else’s. His Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest is one of the most quietly powerful portraits in the building. The Venetian rooms hold Titian’s equestrian portrait of Charles V at the Battle of Mühlberg, which became a model for royal portraiture in Spain, and the visit makes a natural partner to the day in Toledo, El Greco’s city, covered in our guide to a Toledo day trip from Madrid.

Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights

Philip II loved the work of Hieronymus Bosch, and the Prado has one of the finest groups of his paintings anywhere. The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych of paradise, a crowded garden of pleasures and a nightmarish hell, can occupy you for as long as you are willing to stand in front of it. Go early or late in the day if you can; it draws a crowd.

A short route through the Prado

The Prado is large, and rooms are rearranged from time to time, so pick up a floor plan at the entrance and mark the works you want to see before you set off. A route that suits most people starts on the ground floor with Bosch and the Flemish painters, continues to Goya’s The Third of May and the Black Paintings, then takes the stairs or lift to the main floor for the central gallery, the Velázquez rooms with Las Meninas, El Greco and the Venetians, and ends with Goya’s court portraits. That is plenty for one visit, and it leaves you with energy to spare.

How long should you allow for the Prado?

Plan on a morning for a focused visit, and resist the urge to do more. The museum’s own guided tour of selected masterpieces lasts about ninety minutes, which gives a sense of how much a single, attentive visit can hold. If you want to see more, it is better to come back on a second day than to stretch one visit too far.

Is there seating, and how accessible is the museum?

Yes: the museum lends wheelchairs free of charge, and benches for resting are provided in the Galería Jónica on the ground floor of the Villanueva building and in the entrance hall of the Jerónimos building. Coats and bags that are not allowed in the galleries can be left in the free cloakrooms at the entrances. The main effort is standing and walking slowly, which is more tiring than it sounds, so plan a break at the café halfway through.

The Jerónimos building and the museum today

Between 2001 and 2007 the museum carried out the largest expansion in its history, adding a new building designed by Rafael Moneo behind the Villanueva building and connected to it from inside. Built around the restored cloister of the neighbouring church of San Jerónimo el Real, it houses the temporary exhibitions, the main entrance hall, the shop and the café, and it relieved the old building of the crowds that once filled its corridors.

Do you need to book Prado tickets in advance?

Buying online in advance is recommended, as it lets you skip the ticket queue, and timed passes are used for temporary exhibitions. Opening hours, prices and the periods of free admission are published on the museum’s official website, and they change, so check them before you go.

The Paseo del Prado

The Prado sits on a stretch of Madrid that UNESCO added to the World Heritage list in 2021 as the Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a landscape of Arts and Sciences. The Paseo, Charles III’s tree-lined avenue, runs past the museum with its eighteenth-century fountains, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza and Reina Sofía museums lie a short walk away, near the same avenue.

The Retiro Park

Behind the Prado, the Retiro Park was once the garden of a royal palace and is now one of Madrid’s favourite places to walk, with a large lake and the colonnaded monument to Alfonso XII on its shore. After a morning in the galleries, an hour on a bench under the Retiro’s trees is a good way to let what you have seen settle.

The Prado on our tours

On the Spain and Portugal small group tour, Madrid is the centre of the journey’s first half. The group arrives from Burgos on Day 7 and spends four nights in the city. Day 8 brings the Royal Palace, the Reina Sofía museum and an evening tapas tour with a local guide, Day 9 a walking tour of Toledo, and the morning of Day 10 is given to the Prado with a local guide. The group then heads west by way of El Escorial and Ávila to Salamanca. Our guide to the highlights of Madrid covers the rest of the city, and our Spain and Portugal itinerary for mature travellers follows all twenty-four days from Barcelona to Granada.

Discover Spain, a 21-day tour of Spain alone, begins in Madrid. Its first full day takes in the Plaza Mayor, the Mercado de San Miguel, the outside of the Royal Palace, the Prado and Retiro Park, and the following days include an evening tapas tour and a day trip to Segovia before the route turns south.

The Prado is not a museum to conquer. It is one to return to, and the paintings you choose to stand in front of, rather than the number you pass, are what make the visit. Go slowly, sit often, and let Velázquez and Goya do the rest.