The Prado was not built to be a museum. Charles III had Juan de Villanueva design the building as a natural history cabinet, and during the Peninsular War against Napoleon it was used to quarter cavalry: the lead from the roofs was melted down to make bullets. On 19 November 1819 it opened as the royal museum of painting, with 311 pictures in three rooms, all by Spanish painters. Today it displays more than 1,800 works, including paintings, sculptures and objects.
The name comes from the land it stands on, the Prado de los Jerónimos, the meadow of the Hieronymite monks. And there is a way to visit without paying: during the last two opening hours, entry to the collection is free for everyone: 18:00-20:00 from Monday to Saturday and 17:00-19:00 on Sundays and public holidays.
Where do you start, in a museum that displays more than 1,800 works?
Eight works, in order of date
With a handful: here are eight, from the oldest to the most recent. The Prado’s rooms change every time the collection is rehung, so I won’t give you room numbers: pick up the map at the entrance and look for the title of the work.
The Prado is not an encyclopaedic museum like the Louvre: it is the collection of the kings of Spain, and it reflects their taste. That is why it is immensely strong in Spanish, Italian and Flemish painting, and weak wherever the kings did not buy. What is missing here you will find at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, across the paseo.
Fra Angelico, the Annunciation
It is the first work on the list and also the oldest: Fra Angelico painted it around 1425-1426 for the convent of San Domenico in Fiesole. Look at the portico with its blue vaults and gold stars, the angel dressed in pink and the Virgin in her blue cloak. On the left, outside the portico, Adam and Eve are being driven out of the garden.
How did an altarpiece from Fiesole end up in Madrid?
Through a series of hands. In 1611 the friars sold it to Mario Farnese to pay for the church bell tower, and he gave it to the Duke of Lerma. It ended up in the Descalzas Reales convent in Madrid, where Federico Madrazo, then director of the Prado, found it in the upper cloister. The prioress gave it up, and received in exchange an Annunciation painted by Madrazo himself. It has been at the Prado since 16 July 1861.
Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights
It is a triptych measuring 220 by 389 centimetres. On the left is paradise, in the centre a garden crowded with naked bodies, giant fruit and animals, on the right a dark hell. Philip II was a great admirer of Bosch: he bought nine of his works and kept them for a time at El Escorial. The Garden came to the Prado in 1939, on deposit from Patrimonio Nacional.
The date is uncertain; the museum gives 1490-1500. Go up close to the central panel and look at the figures one by one: that is how the picture is read.
Titian, Charles V at Mühlberg
Titian painted the emperor in 1548, a year after his victory at Mühlberg over the Schmalkaldic League, the German Protestant princes. Standing in front of it, you notice the size straight away: it is more than three metres tall. Charles V is in armour, holding a long lance, on a dark horse. Behind him there is only a wood and a quiet landscape: no defeated enemies, no battle.
The story goes that the canvas, left outside to dry, was torn across the horse’s rump by a gust of wind, and that another painter, Christoph Amberger, repaired it. X-rays confirm that the damage is there. The armour Charles V wore at Mühlberg still exists: it belongs to the Real Armería, the arms collection of the kings of Spain, which is part of the Royal Palace.
El Greco, The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest
He looks you straight in the eye, and nobody knows who he is. El Greco painted him around 1578-1580; the most widely accepted theory is that he is Juan de Silva, Marquis of Montemayor. The title we know him by was given by the writer Pío Baroja.
Look at the background. Before the last restoration it looked black: beneath the dirt and the oxidised varnish, the restorers found a light grey.
Rubens, The Three Graces
Rubens kept the painting in his house until his death in 1640; Philip IV bought it when the painter’s belongings were auctioned. The three women are naked, linked by their arms and by a transparent veil; the one in the middle has her back to you, and if you follow their eyes you will see that they are looking at one another.
When it reached the Prado in the 19th century, the picture spent its first decade in a reserved room, closed to the general public, together with the other nudes.
Velázquez, Las Meninas
Velázquez finished it in 1656, and it is one of the most studied paintings in the world. In the centre is the Infanta Margarita, the daughter of Philip IV, with her maids of honour, the «meninas»; on the left is the painter himself, in front of a huge canvas; in the foreground, a dog.
Who is watching the scene?
Look for the mirror on the back wall: it reflects King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Austria. Perhaps it is the portrait Velázquez is painting, perhaps the king and queen have just walked into the room: scholars disagree. In the doorway at the back, against the light, stands José Nieto, his feet on two different steps.
The room really existed: it was in the Alcázar of Madrid, the castle that burned down in 1734 and was replaced by the Royal Palace.
Goya, The Third of May 1808
Goya finished it in 1814, together with The Second of May: the two paintings tell the story of the Madrid uprising against Napoleon’s troops and of the executions the following day. A man in a white shirt raises his arms in front of the firing squad: you only see the soldiers’ backs, never their faces.
Manet drew on it for his Execution of Maximilian, and Picasso remembered it in Guernica, which is now at the Reina Sofía. During the Civil War, in March 1938, the lorry carrying the two paintings towards Girona was hit by a collapsing balcony in Benicarló, and the canvases were torn; the last restoration dates from 2008.
Goya, Saturn
Saturn is one of the Black Paintings, painted by Goya on the walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo, which he bought in 1819. Saturn hung in the dining room, on the ground floor: imagine eating under that stare.
From 1874 the restorer Salvador Martínez Cubells removed the paintings from the walls and transferred them to canvas, on behalf of Baron Émile d’Erlanger, who had bought the estate. The baron showed them in Paris in 1878 and gave them to the Spanish state in 1881. They have been at the Prado since 1889.
Practical information
Details checked on 30 October 2026 on the official website museodelprado.es. Prices and opening hours change: check again before you travel. The Prado’s website does not open to automated checks: I read these figures in the previews of its page on search engines and compared them with a Madrid guide updated in September 2026.
The Prado is one of the three museums on the paseo: the other two are the Reina Sofía, with Guernica, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. To see where the kings who assembled this collection lived, there is the Royal Palace. And if Philip II and Bosch have caught your interest, fifty kilometres away is the monastery of El Escorial, which he had built.
Photographs from Wikimedia Commons: the façade, by Oilisab, CC BY-SA 4.0; the works are public domain reproductions.
