The holidays are already behind us, but the desire to escape never really goes away. As soon as we return to our daily lives, we find ourselves dreaming of the next break, of a ticket booked almost on a whim, of an extended weekend with a change of air and pace.
What if the next getaway took us to the heart of Spain? Paperjam takes you to Madrid, a vibrant capital where art is on every street corner. With world-famous museums, confidential palaces and royal gardens just an hour away by train, the city offers a dense, elegant cultural immersion perfectly suited to a few days of enlightened disconnection. Here, everything seems within walking distance: in just a few metro stations, you go from one masterpiece to another.
Museo Nacional del Prado
The Prado is the museum par excellence, the one whose works populated our Spanish, Latin or history textbooks at secondary school, and which we finally discover in real life, with a slight thrill. Photography is not allowed here—a strict rule—and some rooms fill up very quickly: it’s best to book your ticket to avoid the long queues.
But the effort is amply rewarded. From Velázquez’s Meninas to Goya’s disturbing Saturn Devouring His Son, via El Bosco’s essential Garden of Delights triptych, the collection offers an impressive panorama of European painting before the 18th century. Spanish, Flemish, Italian, French: all the big names are here, alongside an abundance of religious scenes and liturgical paintings. The Hall of the Muses, below, is particularly striking. One of the largest museums in Europe, with an eclectic and dense tour, where everyone is bound to find a work capable of leaving them for a few blissful moments.
Museo Reina Sofía
While many people flock to the museum first and foremost to admire Guernica and the exceptional collection devoted to Picasso, there are many other surprises in store. During our visit, two temporary exhibitions stood out in particular. The retrospective devoted to Juan Uslé, “That Ship on the Mountain” (on view until 20 April), explored more than 40 years of abstract painting through a non-chronological, almost narrative route, where colour becomes rhythm, pulsation, breathing.
Another highlight was the major retrospective dedicated to Maruja Mallo (on view until 16 March). A visionary, a free spirit, a modern artist, she blurred the boundaries between the avant-garde and popular culture, between aesthetics and politics. The exhibition retraces her career, from the surrealism of her early years to the more geometric and cosmic compositions of her maturity. His “living natures” are particularly striking: organic, almost theatrical forms in which the living seems both celebrated and put under tension.
But to reduce the Reina Sofía to its temporary exhibitions or Guernica would be to miss the point. The collections devoted to the last 50 years offer a stimulating reading of contemporary Spanish and international art, in dialogue with major social changes—feminism, ecology, decolonisation, counter-cultures. The richness of the avant-garde proposals, the diversity of media and the freedom of form make for a fascinating visit, without ever locking you into an academic reading.
And before you leave, don’t forget to climb onto the roof terrace. It offers splendid views over Madrid and is the place to see Miralda’s “Wheat & Steak (Trigo y bistec)”, a sculpture that is as ironic as it is monumental, playing with the codes of kitsch and food as a cultural construct.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
The third pillar of the famous “art triangle”, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza offers arguably the most fluid journey through the history of Western painting. Duccio, Van Eyck, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Canaletto, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Mondrian, O’Keeffe, Hopper… and, thank goodness, Kandinsky: nearly a thousand works span seven centuries of creation, from the end of the 13th to the 20th century. We move from the Gothic and the Italian or Flemish Renaissance to the Italian vedute (“views” in Italian), from French Impressionism to German Expressionism, and then to the avant-gardes of the 20th century. The section devoted to Degas is notable, but it’s easy to be won over by many other masterpieces over the three floors.
The Carmen Thyssen collection, one of the most important private collections in the world, is now presented in a redesigned layout, offering a particularly clear chronological reading, from the Old Masters to modern artists. Since the re-installation in 2021, the tour has become more coherent: the Old Masters occupy the second floor, while the focus moves back down to the modern art of the 19th and 20th centuries. The whole works almost like a Spanish Centre Pompidou—with a more marked historical continuity—so much so that modernity is in natural dialogue with previous centuries. At the moment, the museum is also devoting a retrospective to the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, famous for his silent and enigmatic interiors, although the wealth of the permanent collection is already enough to fill an entire day.
Museo Lázaro Galdiano
A little way off the main tourist routes, the Museo Lázaro Galdiano offers a more hushed, almost intimate experience. The visit begins in a deliberately dark room where only a masterly sword, dramatically lit, catches the eye. Then, with each step, the walls light up, revealing hundreds of objects: jewels, pieces of silverware, weapons and precious curiosities. You soon realise that you are not in a traditional museum, but in the world of a passionate collector. The building itself—as elegant on the outside as it is on the inside—contributes to this immersion: carved doors, painted ceilings, marquetry, marble and stucco vie for attention, to the point where you sometimes find yourself looking up more at the decorations than at the works.
The collection is the fruit of more than 60 years of obstinate research led by José Lázaro Galdiano, who settled in Madrid at the end of the 19th century. Together with his wife, he collected more than 12,600 pieces—paintings, sculptures, textiles, numismatics, ivories, furniture, silverware—now on display in the palace in Parque Florido. The first floor, still in its original state, offers an impressive panorama of Spanish art from the 15th to the 19th century, with works by El Greco, Zurbarán, Ribera, Murillo, and a remarkable group of paintings by Goya. The upper floors take a broader look at the Italian, Flemish, German, Dutch and English schools, while the “collector’s cabinet” exhibits weapons, medals, fabrics and coins in display cases and drawers that the public can open themselves.
The whole evokes a veritable cabinet of curiosities, rich without being stuffy, learned but accessible. It’s calm, spacious and away from the crowds.
Museo Cerralbo
The Museo Cerralbo is one of those addresses that you discover almost by chance and make a lasting impression. Housed in a late 19th century palace, it preserves intact the atmosphere in which the family of the Marquis of Cerralbo lived. Here, the building is a work of art in its own right: the walls are entirely covered in paintings, the ceilings richly decorated, the marquetry floors impeccable, and the furniture spectacularly refined. You will pass through some thirty rooms where paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, textiles, jewellery, weapons and archaeological curiosities coexist in a skilfully orchestrated profusion. The weapons gallery is impressive, but it is the ballroom in particular that fascinates: monumental mirrors, statues, gilding, chandeliers… It’s easy to imagine long dresses twirling under the chandeliers. No nook or cranny is left untouched, and with each new room, the wonder begins anew.
The museum closes fairly early—last admissions at 2 p.m.—which reinforces its confidential nature. At the moment, it is also taking part in the 10th Muestra de Orfebrería Contemporánea as part of the Madrid Design Festival, with an exhibition devoted to contemporary goldsmithing and jewellery in the Ferraz Room. An interesting dialogue between aristocratic heritage and current creation, even if the magic of the place already fully operates without it.
Bonus: a little escapade
Just an hour by train from Madrid, Aranjuez offers a royal interlude ideal for a day’s getaway. Listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site as part of the cultural landscape, this Real Sitio covers more than 110 hectares of gardens in a fertile plain at the confluence of the Tagus and Jarama rivers. The spring residence of Spanish sovereigns for centuries, the Royal Palace of Aranjuez was designed as a bright and refined holiday resort. If you’ve already visited the Royal Palace in Madrid, discover its more intimate, seasonal country counterpart here.
Built from the 16th century under Philip II, then extended by the Bourbons, the palace blends the austere classicism of the Habsburgs with the more lavish decor of the 18th century. The official salons have some marvels in store: the spectacular Hall of Mirrors, the majestic Arab Hall with its neo-Moorish decorations, and the astonishing porcelain cabinet, entirely covered in delicately modelled plaques. The ballroom and royal flats also bear witness to an elegant art of living, designed for the spring season, when the court moved here from Easter until early summer.
At the time of our visit, the gardens were unfortunately closed, but you can easily guess their charm in spring.
