Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

The Prado Museum is Spain's national museum of art in Madrid, founded in 1818 by Ferdinand VII and opened to the public in 1819. The building, one of the finest examples of Spanish Neoclassical architecture, had been intended for a Museum of Natural Science but had never served that purpose. The major part of the collection derives from the royal collections made in the course of three centuries by the Habsburg and Bourbon kings of Spain, who were some of the most discriminating and lavish patrons in Europe. The museum is remarkable less for comprehensiveness than for unequalled representation in certain fields. Above all, it contains what is far and away the world's greatest collection of Spanish painting, El Greco, Velázquez, and Goya, being supremely well represented. It is among the richest of all museums in works by Hieronymus Bosch and Titian, and has superb collections of Tintoretto, Veronese, Rubens, and van Dyck.

You can find more information on the Museo del Prado at the museum's home page.



Recommended viewing from the collection:



Statistics