Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid

About the Thyssen Museum

The museum is built on the collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza industrial family, assembled by two generations of collectors in the 20th century. Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza was looking for a new home for it, and in 1992 it went on show in Madrid in the restored 19th-century Villahermosa Palace. In 1993 the Spanish state bought most of the collection.

Today it holds about a thousand works, and its value is its breadth: where the Prado is the old masters and the Reina Sofía the 20th century, the Thyssen shows the whole history of Western painting in sequence. The Carmen Thyssen collection of Spanish and Impressionist landscapes was later added.

What to see

The route runs from top to bottom, old to new. The top floor holds Italian and Flemish masters of the 13th to 16th centuries: portraits, icons and Ghirlandaio's celebrated *Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni*. Then come the Renaissance, Dürer, Caravaggio and 17th-century Dutch painting.

The middle floor is the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Cézanne and Van Gogh. Downstairs is the 20th century: the Expressionists Kirchner and Kandinsky, the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, the Americans Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe, and Roy Lichtenstein's Pop Art. It's a chance to see how art changed in a single walk.

What to see at the Thyssen

• Italian masters — Renaissance portraits.
• Dutch painting — 17th-century landscapes and scenes.
• The Impressionists — Monet, Renoir, Degas.
• Van Gogh — landscapes from his final years.
• Edward Hopper — 20th-century American painting.
• Pop Art — Lichtenstein and his contemporaries.

Pairing it with the Prado and Reina Sofía

Madrid's three great museums stand on one boulevard, a few minutes apart: the Prado is opposite, across Plaza de Neptuno, and the Reina Sofía is by Atocha station, 10 minutes south. Seeing all three in a day is tiring, so split them over two.

The Thyssen is the most compact and calm of the three, with smaller rooms, fewer people and pictures hung with space to breathe. It suits anyone who tires of vast collections, and teenagers too: the whole history of painting without an hours-long route.

Tips for your visit

Weekday mornings are nearly empty, with groups arriving towards noon. There's a café with a garden terrace, a cloakroom and a shop with good art books. Photos of the permanent collection without flash are usually allowed, but check with the attendants.

Use the audio guide or the museum app to plan a short route through the key works. Temporary exhibitions need a separate ticket and change several times a year.

Afterwards, walk along the boulevard to the Cibeles fountain or into Retiro Park. For food, the lanes around Plaza de Santa Ana in the Barrio de las Letras are full of tapas bars.

Places in Madrid: compare and choose

Places in Madrid rated by YesGo. Click a column header to sort.

Nearby and on the way

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Prado Museum

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2 h 30 min · Paid · 6 min walk

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Puerta del Sol

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Reina Sofía Museum

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2 h 30 min · Paid; free evenings · 14 min walk

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Retiro Park

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1 h 45 min · Free · 16 min walk

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How to do it right

• Start at the top.
• Free on Mondays, by booking.
• The combo with the Prado and Reina Sofía saves money.
• The Prado is across the road.

Questions