The Museo del Prado ( PRAH-doh; Spanish pronunciation: [muˈseo ðel ˈpɾaðo]), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It houses collections of European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 20th century, based on the former Spanish royal collection, and the single best collection of Spanish art. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture in 1819, it also contains important collections of other types of works. The numerous works by Francisco Goya, the single most extensively represented artist, as well as by Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, and Diego Velázquez, are some of the highlights of the collection. Velázquez and his keen eye and sensibility were also responsible for bringing much of the museum's fine collection of Italian masters to Spain, now one of the largest outside of Italy.
The collection currently comprises around 8,200 drawings, 7,600 paintings, 4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures, in addition to many other works of art and historic documents. As of 2012, the museum displayed about 1,300 works in the main buildings, while around 3,100 works were on temporary loan to various museums and official institutions. The remainder were in storage.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 attendance plunged by 76 percent to 852,161. Nonetheless, the Prado was ranked as the 16th most-visited museum in the list of most-visited art museums in the world in 2020. It is one of the largest museums in Spain.
The Prado, with the nearby Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Museo Reina Sofía, forms Madrid's Golden Triangle of Art, which was included in the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2021.
Distance between:
Madrid to Prado281 Miles / 452 Kms Barcelona to Prado541 Miles / 871 Kms
42.6835959,-8.1912149