Day 2 in Madrid
Explore Madrid’s art!
If you’re an art fan, you have come to the right place! Madrid hosts the Golden Triangle of Art, made up of three important art museums that are close to each other in the center of the Spanish capital.
The Reina Sofia Museum, or Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, is a national museum that includes temporary exhibition spaces. The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art. The Reina Sofia’s jewel is unquestionably Picasso’s “Guernica”, a painting that commemorates the destruction in 1937 of the Basque town of Guernica by German bombers.
Also, you will find there many works of Salvador Dali. In one of the rooms, you can see a film projected about how Dali sprinkles the paint inside a greenhouse, being in full process of creation of “A Soft Self Portrait”. The Reina Sofia collection has also works by Spanish artists like: Juan Gris, Joan Miro, Julio Gonzalez, and international artists like: Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Max Ernst, and many more.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is the second angle of the Golden Triangle. The private collection of Baron Hans-Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza is considered the most important in the world, consisting of 775 paintings! Due to the terracotta-pink walls, marble floors and skylight of the Museum, you can view the works in nearly perfect illumination. In comparison with the Reina Sofia Museum, the Thyssen comprises artworks of international painters as well, representing various cultural movements like Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo.
The cherry from the top of our cake is the Museo del Prado. This museum impresses from the start with its gigantic neo-classical building that hosts those over 9000 pieces of art! It is also one of the world’s first museums displaying the royal art collection.
Of course, with so many paintings, it is impossible to walk over the entire museum, that is why free maps are provided at the entrances, available in English, too, to help you get to the most must-see masterpieces. The itineraries suggest you seeing paintings and sculptures by Botticelli, Titian, Rafael, El Greco, Rubens, van Dyck, Murillo, Velazquez, and so on.
In the second evening of your short trip to Madrid, we recommend you to taste the traditional drink of Spain – the gin tonic. It is hard to find in Madrid a bar that does not serve its own variant of gin tonic, most often accompanied by a plate with fruit jellies. Head to Chueca, the district which probably has the highest agglomeration at bars, and hop into the bar of the Hotel “Only You”, where a selection of 36 types of gins wait for you. Good luck and hope you’ll find your way back to your hotel!
