Six Cool Madrid Museums that are not the Prado

One of the best things about having a full week to explore a city is the chance to do so many of the “if you have extra time” suggestions from guidebooks and websites. Weekend trips focus on city highlights; a few days more and you might get to see your top pick of the second tier. With seven days, plus extra evenings, I was really happy with the number of museums I was able to visit while in Madrid.

Lazaro Galdiano €6.00

By the time I arrived (late afternoon), the girl selling tickets was short on change. I could wait ten minutes until free entry started, unless I was a student? I’m an educator, but didn’t have my school ID to prove it, so I pulled up my school e-mail account on my phone and was let in for free. Awesome.

Lazaro Galdiano was a rich publisher, journalist, and art collector, who amassed an incredible collection of… collections. While his art collection is incredible for an individual, other collections in the museum – from ivories to pottery to silver to ceramics to weapons – give a broader picture of his interests.

Goya’s Witches’ Sabbath is perhaps the most iconic painting at this museum, but you’ll also find works by El Greco, Velazquez, Zuburan, Tiepolo, Constable, Cranach the Elder, and Bosch. I thought it was interesting that some of the informational plaques cheerfully admitted that the authorship of a few of the works was dubious - but Galdiano had liked them enough to include them in his collection anyway.

I wonder if this is the painting that tipped Bosch over the edge.  Portrait of a praying donor isn't working? Turn him into a weird hell-flower!

National Archaeological Museum (MAN) €3.00

So many of the items on my art bucket list are inspired by Janson's iconic Art History 101 textbook, lol. (And adding that link, I just noticed one of my former professors is now a contributor to it. Nice.) The reason I wanted to visit MAN was to see the Dama de Elche, a pre-Roman Iberian sculpture.

MAN was a little difficult to find, though only because it shares a building with the National Library. I arrived completely stuffed and mildly dehydrated following lunch at Botín, and was a bit crushed when I discovered I'd gone to the wrong side of the building and would have to walk around to the other side of the enormous block. Once I got there, I took a few minutes to sit in the quiet, spacious lobby and down a bottle of water before entering the exhibit space. The bottom floor had a cool display showing what cultures were where when – important in a country created from many languages and factions. Aside from the Dama de Elche, some highlights were a pretty cool Visigothic crown, Roman mosaics, Islamic pottery, and a small but neat Egyptian section that had me wishing I could win the lottery and have time to finish my YA novel on a Regency-era girl who discovers she's a reanimated mummy. (The things the world is missing.)

Sorolla Museum €3.00

You probably know the Valencian artist Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, even if you don't recognize the name. He was an impressionist painter and absolute master of light and shadow, famous for his seaside paintings of women in white dresses and kids splashing around in the ocean.

His Madrid home is a lovely place to spend an afternoon. The rooms are furnished as they were during the artist’s life, including his gorgeous red studio, which is 100% life goal material. Upstairs, you’ll find a few rooms dedicated to exhibits that relate to the artist – when I visited, it was works by a group of contemporary artists who get together to visit the homes of old masters and gain inspiration by painting views of their spaces.

Anden Cero free

Anden Cero, or Estación Museo Chamberí, is one of Madrid's more offbeat museums. Though trains still pass through behind plexiglass walls, the station was abandoned in the '60s. I've always wanted to "oversleep" my stop and stay on the train in NYC to see City Hall station, I'm too chicken to do so. This was a nice, legal alternative.

Chamberí is preserved as it was when it closed, complete with vintage ads painted on the wall tiles. A short movie, completely in Spanish, serves as an introduction to the station's history. One thing to note if you're visiting in summer - there's no A.C., so it's boiling hot. I made this a short visit, but you don't need much time to explore the platform anyway.

Real Academia Bellas Artes de San Fernando €8.00

Spain's Royal Arts Academy houses a gallery of work from the 15th to the 20th centuries. The collection features the work of every famous Spanish artist - in the 18th and 19th centuries, you had to be part of the academy to get anywhere as an artist. It was established in 1744; Goya was one of its directors after being denied entry as a young man. Epic revenge.

Museo Cerralbo €3.00

Located right off the Plaza de Espana, this collection of the 17th Marquis of Cerralbo is housed in his former residence. The Marquis lived from the mid-1800s to the 1920s, but inherited older works as well. The museum is set up as a well-decorated house rather than a collection, making it interesting to compare to the Lazaro Galdiano. Some highlights of the collection are works by Tintoretto, El Greco, and Zubaran. After buying your ticket at the front office, you're offered a laminated guide in your preferred language, that details the important pieces in each room. The most impressive spaces are the grand staircase and ballroom, but some of the smaller rooms are fascinating too, like a chamber inspired by travels to Asia and the Middle East, and a dressing room with an intricate display of swords that rattle when you walk past.

I notice that I miscounted when I created my pinnable graphic for this post. Guess what? You get an extra museum thrown in!