---
node: spot_madrid_museo_del_prado
type: spot
slug: museo_del_prado
destination: dest_madrid
title: "Museo del Prado"
lead: "The Prado holds the Spanish royal collection and is the best museum of European painting to 1800 anywhere. Velázquez, Goya and Bosch are represented at a depth no other collection can match."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_madrid_museo_del_prado.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_del_Prado_-_Madrid_01.jpg"
image_author: "Javier Perez Montes"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

The building was designed in 1785 as a natural history cabinet and became a picture gallery in 1819, when the collection was opened to the public. Because it grew from a single royal collection rather than by purchase on the market, it is deep where the Habsburg and Bourbon kings bought hard: 50 Velázquez, 140 Goya, the Bosch triptychs Philip II collected. Las Meninas hangs in a room built to its proportions.

## Highlights

Give Las Meninas twenty minutes and then find the mirror position the painting was made for. Goya's Black Paintings, moved here from the walls of his house, are in the basement and are the hardest thing in the museum. Entry is free for the last two hours daily, which is crowded but genuinely free.