Reina Sofía or Thyssen: which museum to add to the Prado, and how to see Guernica
After the Prado, Madrid offers two more great museums a short walk away. What the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza each hold, how to find Guernica, which one suits which visitor, and what the tickets include.
On the afternoon of 26 April 1937, a market day, German and Italian aircraft fighting for General Franco bombed the Basque town of Gernika for some three hours. Pablo Picasso, in Paris, had been asked by the Spanish Republic for a mural for its pavilion at that summer's world fair, and had not yet settled on a subject. He began drawing within days and finished in about five weeks: a canvas nearly eight metres long, in black, white and grey.
After the fair the painting travelled, and spent four decades on loan in New York. Picasso had laid down that it should go to Spain only when the country was free again. It arrived in September 1981, six years after Franco's death, and has hung since 1992 in the Reina Sofía. That one picture decides the question for many visitors. For the rest, here is how the two museums differ.
Three museums, ten minutes apart
The Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofía stand along the same avenue. The Thyssen is across the square from the Prado, five minutes on foot. The Reina Sofía is ten minutes further south, facing Atocha station.
They divide the history of painting between them. The Prado holds the old masters of the Spanish crown, up to Goya. The Reina Sofía takes over where the Prado stops: the twentieth century, mostly Spanish. The Thyssen is one family's collection and covers seven centuries, including everything the other two lack.
The Reina Sofía: Guernica and the Spanish century
The main building was Madrid's General Hospital, an eighteenth-century block round a garden courtyard, to which glass lifts were added on the outside. A red extension by Jean Nouvel opened behind it in 2005.
Guernica is on the second floor. Go straight up. The room is long and always busy, and a guard keeps people back from the canvas. Do not stop at the painting alone: on the walls nearby are the sketches Picasso made on the way, and the photographs Dora Maar took of the canvas at each stage, which show him moving the bull and raising the arm with the lamp. The rules on taking pictures in this room have changed more than once, so read the signs.
On the same floor are Dalí, with the Girl at the Window of 1925 and The Great Masturbator of 1929, Miró, and the cubist still lifes of Juan Gris. Two hours cover the floor well. The floors above, with art after 1945, are for those with a taste for it.
The museum is closed on Tuesdays. It has long opened free in the last two hours of the day and on Sunday afternoon, and the line for those hours forms early.
The garden in the middle of the old hospital, a quiet place between two floors. Photo: Carmen Voces, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
The Thyssen: seven centuries in one house
Two barons Thyssen-Bornemisza, father and son, built up one of the great private collections of the last century at their villa in Lugano. Spain received it on loan in 1988, opened it in the Villahermosa Palace in 1992, and bought it the following year: nearly eight hundred paintings.
Start on the top floor and come down, and you walk from the thirteenth century to the 1960s. What makes it valuable in Madrid is what the Prado does not have:
- Early Italian and Flemish pictures. Jan van Eyck's Annunciation, painted to look like two stone statues, and Ghirlandaio's profile portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni.
- The Renaissance north of the Alps. Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII, hardly larger than a book, and Carpaccio's Young Knight in a Landscape.
- Caravaggio. His Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
- Impressionists and after. Monet, Degas, Van Gogh's fields at Auvers from the last months of his life.
- Americans. Nineteenth-century landscapes, and Edward Hopper's Hotel Room.
- The twentieth century. German Expressionists, and Roy Lichtenstein's Woman in Bath.
Allow two to two and a half hours. The Thyssen is open every day, with a shorter Monday on which entry to the collection has long been free.
The Villahermosa Palace, on the Paseo del Prado, where the Thyssen opened in 1992. Photo: Luis García (Zaqarbal), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, in the Thyssen. Photo: reproduction of a painting in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Holbein's small portrait of Henry VIII, also in the Thyssen. Photo: reproduction of a painting in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Which one, then
- Choose the Reina Sofía if Guernica is on your list, if you care about Picasso, Dalí and Miró, or if you are travelling with teenagers who have had enough saints.
- Choose the Thyssen if you like to see a little of everything, if Impressionism matters to you, or if the Prado left you wanting more old pictures from outside Spain.
- On the same day as the Prado, the Thyssen is easier: it is next door and smaller. Do the Prado in the morning, eat, and cross the square.
- With a second day, give the Reina Sofía its own morning, and go straight to the second floor while you are fresh.
The three museums also sell a joint pass for one visit to each. It pays only if you will enter all three.
Reading the partner's listings
- A Reina Sofía entry ticket covers the collection and the temporary exhibitions, with no commentary.
- A Reina Sofía ticket with an audio tour adds a route through the rooms in the partner's app, on your own phone. Bring earphones.
- A Thyssen-Bornemisza ticket with an audio tour is the same pairing for the Thyssen.
- The listings called only "audio tour", one for each museum, do not include entry. You buy that yourself.
These are the Reina Sofía and Thyssen tickets and audio tours our partner sells, with today's prices:
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on WeGoTrip
Literary, Art & Music Tours Madrid: Reina Sofia Museum Ticket & Audio Tour
Book on WeGoTripfrom€16.79
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on WeGoTrip
Museum & Attraction Tickets Madrid: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum Ticket
Book on WeGoTripfrom€16.19
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on WeGoTrip
History & Heritage Madrid: Thyssen-Bornemisza Ticket & Audio Tour
Book on WeGoTripfrom€19.94
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on WeGoTrip
Museum & Attraction Tickets Madrid: Reina Sofia Museum Entry Ticket
Book on WeGoTripfrom€14.06
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on WeGoTrip
History & Heritage Madrid: Reina Sofia Museum Audio Tour
Book on WeGoTripfrom€6
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Current hours are on our pages for the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza.
From here
The Prado is between the two. Behind it, the Retiro park has a boating lake and the Crystal Palace, a glasshouse of 1887. Across the road from the Reina Sofía, the old hall of Atocha station holds a garden of tropical plants under its iron roof. For the rest of Madrid, open the trip planner for Spain.
Cover photo: Luis García (Zaqarbal), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 ES.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Reina Sofía or the Thyssen better?
They do different things. The Reina Sofía is Spanish twentieth-century art, with Guernica. The Thyssen is a survey of seven centuries, strong where the Prado is not: early Flemish, Impressionist and American painting.
Where is Guernica in the Reina Sofía?
On the second floor of the main building, the old hospital. The sketches for it and the photographs of its stages hang in the rooms around.
Can you do the Prado and the Thyssen in one day?
Yes. They face each other across a square. Take the Prado in the morning and the Thyssen, which is smaller, after lunch.
How long does the Reina Sofía take?
About two hours for the second floor, with Guernica, Dalí and Miró. Add an hour if you go up to the art after 1945.
Which day is the Reina Sofía closed?
It is closed on Tuesdays. The Thyssen is open daily, with shorter hours on Mondays. Check the current hours before you go.
