Madrid Art Tours
Madrid is a relative newcomer to the short European city-break scene. Yet as
a centre of art it is right up there with the best of Europe's best.
Some of the essential museums you must visit on an art tour of Madrid are the
following:
The Prado Museum is one
of the world’s greatest galleries with a higher concentration of masterpieces
than any other. It is so full of treasures that it is only possible to display
around 1,500 of its 9,000-piece collection at any one time.
There are many Spanish masterpieces including Goya's 'Maja Naked' and 'The
3rd May Shootings and Velazquez's 'Las Meninas' as well as many works from the
Italian, Flemish and Dutch Schools.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza
is one of the world's most important art collections and attracts over 750,000
annual visitors. It displays works from just about every major figure in the
history of western art installed in chronological order so that visitors can
take a historical walking tour of European Painting from the 13th Century to
modern times.
The collection dates back to the 1920s when Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza
acquired Old Masters for his villa overlooking Lake Lugano in Switzerland. After
he died in 1947, his son expanded the collection to include many modern
masterpieces. In 1993 the Spanish government outbid the Getty Foundation to
secure the collection for $350 million when its true value was estimated at over
$1 billion.
The Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia is is one of the best venues in Europe for major temporary
exhibitions. Its centre piece is Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ which is undoubtedly the
most famous painting of the 20th century. The rest of the permanent collection
contains works by virtually every noted Spanish artist of this century including
Dali and Miro, together with many others by non-Spanish artists.
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