Prado Museum Tours | Explore the National Museum of Spain With an Expert Guide

Guided tour

Duration: 2 hr. 30 min
Suited for: in-depth exploration

Why go for it?

• Explore the best of Prado Museum while getting to know the unknown stories behind the masterpieces with an expert guide accompanying you.
• The museum is home to over 20,000 works of art - around 7,500 paintings, 8,000 drawings, 1,000 sculptures, and more. Your guide will help you navigate through these artworks conveniently.
• Some classics to look out for: Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez and David Victorious over Goliath by Caravaggio.
• Once your guided tour ends, you're free to stay back in the museum and explore at your own pace.

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Combo

Duration: Flexible
Suited for: budget travellers

Why go for it?

• Skip all the arduous ticketing lines and head straight into Prado Museum and the Royal Palace of Madrid with these discounted combo tickets!
• Flexible and extended validity entry to Prado Museum lets you explore over 20,000 works of art from the Renaissance period all the way to Picasso's era.
• Get up close with iconic artworks, from Las Meninas by Velázquez, to Andromeda & the Dragon by Titian, and more.

Recommended Tours:

Combo (Save 5%): Prado Museum + Royal Palace of Madrid Skip-the-Line Tickets

Spanish Paintings

Prado Museum boasts a huge collection of 2800 Spanish paintings from the 12th to 19th centuries. It has focused on displaying extensive works of individual artists. For instance, there are 140 art pieces by Goya and 48 artworks by Velazquez on display at the museum. The seven galleries on the ground floor of the museum are home to several artworks of other iconic Spanish painters like Greco, Juan de Flandes, Luis Meléndez, Pedro Berruguete, and Luis de Morales, to name a few. 

Italian and French Paintings

Italian and French paintings made it to the Prado Museum only during the 16th century. Until then, the Spanish monarchs were not too keen on commissioning Italian, Venetian, and French painters except Titian whose works dominate the collection at the museum. Other painters whose artworks are on display at Prado Museum include Caravaggio, Luca Giordano, Guido Reni, Paolo Veronese, Tintoretto, Antonello da Messina, Jacopa Bassano, and Georges de la Tour, among others.

Flemish Paintings and Northern Schools

Prado Museum’s collection also includes over 1,000 Flemish paintings. Notable artists like Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony Van Dyck, Raphael, Rogier Van der Weyden, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, to name a few. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, the oil painting technique flourished. A joint rule made it easy for the Spanish monarchs to get their hands on the best Flemish paintings and exhibit them at the museum. Some of the prominent and iconic artworks include Descent from the Cross, Adoration of the Magi, The Triumph of Death, and Saint George and the Dragon, among others.

19th Century Paintings

The Villanueva building inside the museum houses a large collection of almost 2700 19th-century artworks that were borrowed in 1971 from Museo de Arte Moderno, the Spanish National Museum. Displayed across 12 galleries, the artworks include themes ranging from neoclassical to romanticism. A few prominent works of art include Boys on the Beach by Joaquin Sorolla, Nude Boy on the Beach at Portici by Mariano Fortuny, and The Death of Viriatus by Jose de Madrazo, to name a few. 

Sculptures and Decorative Arts

Made on the orders of the Spanish monarchs, Museo Nacional del Prado is home to 1000 pieces of sculpture and around 3500 pieces of decorative arts, including some from the Baroque and Renaissance periods. Some must-see pieces include Charles V and the Fury (a sculpture of Emperor Charles V), Epimetheus and Pandora (made of wood and painted with oils), and The Dauphin’s Treasure (a group of vessels made of hardstones like gold, diamonds, silver, and other precious gems).

Photographs, Prints, and Drawings

Another collection worth admiring at the museum is that of their prints, drawings, and photographs. Prado Museum has a massive collection of 10,000 photographs, 9,000 drawings, and 6,000 prints. In 1931, Spanish aristocrat Pedro Fernandez Duran bequeathed about 2,000 drawings from the 16th to the 19th centuries, including the preparatory drawings of the Last Judgment fresco by Michelangelo. The Spanish and Italian drawings, the Goya collection of prints and letters, and Juan de Villanueva’s Ground Plan and Elevation of the Museum drawings are a few must-see works of art at the museum.