Prado, Reina Sofía or Thyssen: Madrid's three art museums compared

The short answer

Choose by what you want to see. The three collections overlap in time more than their reputations suggest, so XTOUR's reading of the museums' own descriptions is that the useful distinction is what each was built to collect, not only which centuries it covers.

Madrid's tourism website describes the Prado's walls as lined with masterpieces of the Spanish, Italian and Flemish schools, including Velázquez's Las Meninas and Goya's Third of May, 1808.[1] The Museo Reina Sofía says its collection runs from the final decades of the nineteenth century to the present.[2] Picasso's Guernica is part of it.[3] The Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza is different in kind: a privately assembled collection spanning most European and American styles of painting from the late 13th to the 20th century, which the Spanish state acquired in 1993.[7] The Thyssen's own history says that its broad representation of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century movements, and of schools of painting practically absent from the national collections, complemented the holdings of the Prado and the Reina Sofía.[8]

XTOUR does not rank them. Which one suits a visit depends on which painters matter to you.

The Prado: the Spanish, Italian and Flemish schools

This section follows Madrid's tourism website, esmadrid.com, rather than the Prado's own pages. The tourism site gives the collection as 8,600 paintings and over 700 sculptures. It names galleries devoted to El Greco and to Goya, Spanish Golden Age painters including Ribera, Zurbarán, Murillo and Velázquez, the Venetians Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, and a Flemish collection running from Van der Weyden's The Descent from the Cross and Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights to Rubens. The same page traces the Prado's Spanish painting from eleventh-century Mozarabic murals to rooms of nineteenth-century art that include Fortuny and Sorolla, so the Prado's range overlaps much of the Thyssen's.[1]

The Reina Sofía: from the late nineteenth century to the present

The Reina Sofía says its collection of 25,000 pieces spans the final decades of the nineteenth century to the present, with a focus on Spanish and international art and a particular emphasis on Latin America.[2] Its visit pages describe a main site entered through the Sabatini and Nouvel buildings, and two galleries in the Retiro park, the Palacio de Cristal and the Palacio de Velázquez. The same page says the Palacio de Cristal is temporarily closed for architectural improvements.[4]

The collection is being rehung in stages. The museum says the process is due to conclude in 2028, with the collection moving to the upper floors of the Sabatini Building.[2] Its programme for 2025–2026 announced a new presentation of its most contemporary collections for February 2026.[5] The press dossier for that season names the first stage, contemporary art from 1975 to the present on the Sabatini Building's fourth floor, and says the lower floors and the two Retiro palaces will hold temporary exhibitions from 2026.[6] The museum's collections page now lists that presentation, Contemporary Art: 1975–Present, on the fourth floor of the Sabatini Building.[2] What hangs where may therefore change between visits, and the museum's own pages are the place to check.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza: a family collection bought by the state

The Thyssen-Bornemisza began as a private family collection. Its own history names Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza and his son Hans Heinrich as the collection's true architects.[7] It says Hans Heinrich made his first forays into modern art in 1961.[8]

According to the same history, in 1988 the baron and the Spanish state signed a contract for the loan of 775 works with a view to their sale, and Rafael Moneo refurbished the former Palacio de Villahermosa to house them. The museum opened in October 1992, and in June 1993 the works were sold to the state.[8] The foundation that now manages the museum describes itself as belonging to the public sector.[9]

A second collection hangs in the same building. The core of the Carmen Thyssen collection is family works that were not included in the 1993 sale, and it was installed in the museum's extension in 2004. Under a later lease agreement with the Ministry of Culture, the museum says, a selection of it is shown in a new display in its ground-floor galleries.[10]

One pass for three museums

The Thyssen-Bornemisza's page on the Paseo del Arte pass, which it also calls the Art Walk Pass, says it gives one visit to each of the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofía, within a year of purchase and on different days if you wish. The same page describes the pass's coverage of temporary exhibitions in two different ways, so XTOUR does not say which exhibitions are included. According to that page, the pass is sold online through the Thyssen's ticketing website and at the ticket desk of any of the three museums.[11] Its price and the days each museum is closed are set out by the museums.

The three at a glance

What XTOUR does not tell you

XTOUR does not publish prices, opening hours, closing days, ticket rules or free-entry times for the three museums. Each publishes them and changes them. XTOUR has no routing data, so it does not say how long it takes to walk between them, and it has no visitor-count data, so it does not say when any of them is quiet.

For the city as a base, see the Madrid destination page.