Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

The Thyssen-Bornemisza is the private-collection third of Madrid's Paseo del Arte, standing on Paseo del Prado at number 8 in the Villahermosa palace, a few minutes' walk from the Prado and the Reina Sofia. What it holds is a family collection turned national museum. Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza began assembling it around the end of the 1920s with the stated aim of gathering the principal milestones of Western art, buying work dated between the thirteenth and the early nineteenth century. From 1948 his son Hans Heinrich carried it on, deepening the Old Masters and pushing the collection forward as far as the 1980s.

The building holds three separate displays and it helps to know which is which before buying a ticket. The permanent collection, about seven hundred works, occupies the two upper floors and was reinstalled in 2021 to make the route read cleanly: the tour starts on the second floor, given over entirely to Old Masters, and continues on the first floor with the modern masters arranged in reverse order, so a visitor walks forward in time by walking down.

Allow two hours. The museum publishes no suggested visit length anywhere on its visit pages, so two hours is this guide's judgement rather than a figure read off the museum's own site. The number comes from the shape of the display. The permanent collection is about seven hundred works over two floors on a single fixed route, and the Carmen Thyssen ground floor adds a third sequence with its own entrance. Walked steadily, without stopping for a temporary exhibition, the two upper floors take an unhurried ninety minutes; the ground floor adds thirty. A visitor who wants to sit with the Impressionist and twentieth-century rooms on the first floor, which is where most people slow down, should budget three hours.

Tuesday-Sunday 10:00-19:00; Monday 12:00-16:00. Timed events, ceremonies, maintenance and security measures can alter ordinary access. The museum runs two published timetables and the difference is worth checking before travelling. From 1 September to 30 June it opens Tuesday to Friday and Sunday from 10. 00 to 19. 00, Saturday from 10. 00 to 23. 00, and Monday only from 12. 00 to 16. 00. From 1 July to 31 August the weekday close moves out to 21. 00, Tuesday to Friday, while Saturday stays 10. 00 to 23. 00, Sunday stays 10. 00 to 19. 00 and Monday stays 12. 00 to 16. 00.

Adult EUR 14; permanent collection free Monday 12:00-16:00. Special tours, exhibitions and upgrades use separate tickets. General admission is 14 euros and it covers the collections and the temporary exhibitions together. The reduced rate is 10 euros, and the museum applies it to over-65s and pensioners and to students. Groups of seven or more pay 12 euros a head. Several categories enter free: Friends of the museum, under-18s, the unemployed, and visitors with a recognised disability of 33 per cent or above. Two paid add-ons are published alongside the ticket, an audio guide at 5. 50 euros on top of the ticket price and a ticket-plus-cafe-menu combination at 24. 50 euros on top. The Paseo del Arte Pass is 32.

Banco de España Metro. This named stop or station is the clearest public-transport reference for an independent visit. The address is Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid, and the museum's telephone number is 917 911 370. No car is needed and none is wanted. The nearest Metro station is Banco de Espana on line 2, a short walk up the Paseo del Prado, and the museum names it as the closest. Suburban rail is close on both sides: Atocha to the south and Recoletos to the north are the two Cercanias stations the museum lists, and Recoletos in particular puts a visitor within a few minutes on foot.

Step-free entrances or public paving, lifts where needed, and accessible toilets serve principal areas. The access description applies to the principal visitor route rather than every historic or operational space. The Monday trap is the big one. Free entry on Monday sounds like the obvious day to come, but the museum is open only from 12. 00 to 16. 00 that day, and the museum also states that no luggage is accepted in the cloakroom on Mondays. A visitor arriving off a train with a suitcase on a Monday has nowhere to put it.

The museum publishes no visitor photography rules that this guide could find. Its visit, services, getting-here and accessibility pages say nothing about cameras, flash, tripods or selfie sticks, and its Use of Images page covers reproduction rights and the photographic archive rather than what a visitor may do in a gallery. What is known points to caution in the modern rooms. The museum credits many twentieth-century works with an all-rights-reserved rights line naming the artist's estate or a collecting society, and the Carmen Thyssen paintings carry their own credit line, so restrictions are likelier on the first and ground floors than on the second.