Retiro Park and the Prado Museum

Believe it or not, Thursday’s post about the Montjuïc Castle was my last post in my Barcelona series, at least for now! If you happened to miss any of them you can click here to catch up but today I bring you along to the Spanish capital and our first afternoon in Madrid! The flight from Barcelona to Madrid was quite short which allowed my Mom and I to not only do things in the morning (a rainy visit to Park Güell) but also to explore once we arrived. After dropping our bags at the hotel we hit the top two tourist attractions in the city – we explored Retiro Park and then went to the Musueo Nacional del Prado. First up, the gorgeous park:

From the park we headed across the Calle de Alfonso XII to see some art. The Prado Museum is incredible inside and out, even the architecture is incredible. After clearing security we picked up two audio guides, their corresponding maps, and headed off to the galleries featuring Spanish panting with a variety of pieces from 1550 – 1810. We made sure we listened to the descriptions on all of the top works including a number of pieces by El Greco along with other famous Spaniards including still life paintings from Velazquez. With our busy travel day and time in the park we did not have hours upon hours to spend so made sure to visit these galleries first as they were the ones the museum is most famous for.

From there we wandered taking in masterpieces by Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, Murillo, Van Dyck, and Rembrandt along with many I could not name. I loved not only looking at the works of art but studying nearly a dozen art students as they worked on replicating famous pieces. The only part I really did not care for was Goya’s room of black paintings. I walked around the room and then plugged in the audioguide number of the alien eating the baby’s head, listened to 20 seconds, and then had to leave. I understand there is art but this was an entirely different level of disturbing – if you want to see what I am talking about, Google Images has you covered with just the search term, “Goya’s room of black paintings”.