Greetings from Barcelona. I took the opportunity of the train ride between Madrid and Barcelona, where we were cruising along at a cool 300 kmph (184 mph) with all the accoutrements one could want on a train, to draft a brief update on our very enjoyable time in Madrid.
I’d been twice before, the first time with my parents in 2007, the second with my abroad program in 2009. And I didn’t really remember a whole lot more than the art museums. The Prado and the Reina Sofia have some of the world’s most esteemed collections of art, and I recall visiting both—twice—but I didn’t have much more of an impression of the city. I assumed that meant I hadn’t really liked it, but on the third time of visiting, I think it was more a case of 18- to 20-year-old Alex just not really noticing.
Madrid is a pretty great city. The art museums are still great (well, at least one of them), but there’s so much more to offer as well: beautiful architecture, great parks and plazas, abundant markets, and a fabulous diversity of culinary options. We had less than 72 hours here, but we really packed in a lot.
Each day, including the day of our arrival, was centered around one major tourist attraction. Those were the Reina Sofia, the Palacio Real, and the Prado. But we complemented those visits with exploring other parts of the city. I’ll give a brief synopsis of the three tourist attractions and then talk a bit more about the other parts of the city we explored.
Reina Sofia
The Reina Sofia is Spain’s preeminent modern art museum. Spanish MoMA, if you will. It’s large (4 floors) and focused (unsurprisingly) on 20th-century Spanish artists. This should be a good thing. There are many great 20th-century Spanish artists: Picasso, Dalí, and Miró are the most famous, but there are also somewhat lesser-known artists such as Joaquín Sorolla, Juan Gris, and many more much-lesser-known (to me) folks.
I also happen to like modern art. Dalí is among my favorite painters, and I also very much enjoy Picasso. I seem to like Miró more than most folks, and I also appreciate some of the non-Spanish modernists like Magritte, Braque, and Mondrian.
Unfortunately, this museum didn’t live up to either my recollections or my expectations. The first problems we encountered were with the curation. After taking the elevator up to the top floor, we emerged seemingly in the middle of some chronologically arranged exhibit about Spanish artists during the Spanish Civil War. After wandering both directions through a few rooms, I finally asked a staff member if the exhibit began in a certain place, to which the answer was no.
If that particular shortcoming of curation could be attributed to part of that floor of the museum being closed to set up a new temporary exhibition, we encountered similar problems when we went downstairs to see more of the permanent collection. Why particular works of art were grouped remained mostly unclear.
I was also surprised by how few paintings there were. There were an awful lot of drawings, photographs, and weird sculptures (see below), but many fewer of the masterpieces by Dalí, Picasso, and others I recalled from previous visits.
There was still, of course, Guernika, an unparalleled masterpiece of Picasso’s. Guernika was painted in the wake of the Luftwaffe’s bombing of the town from which its eponymous name came. It made its debut at the Spanish booth at the Paris Expo in 1937 while the war was still going on. After Franco took full control in 1939, Picasso, knowing the painting wouldn’t be safe in Spain, made arrangements to house the painting at MoMA until such a time as Spain became a democracy again.
We also enjoyed a series of paintings by a Mexican artist with whom neither of us was familiar, the names of neither (the paintings nor the artist) I can now find on the Reina Sofia’s website.
Palacio Real (Royal Palace)
I had no recollection of going inside the Palacio Real on either of my previous visits to Madrid. They are, frankly, not the kind of thing that tends to interest me too much. We found the gardens of Schönbrunn far more enjoyable than the interior. But Gelsey was pretty interested in going inside the Palacio Real, and since I’d been to the other two tourist attractions we had picked before (not that I minded going again), it seemed a fine thing to do.
To my surprise, it was quite enjoyable. The rooms were all magnificent. We seemed to have more access than we had had in Schönbrunn. And there were magnificent paintings, frescos, tapestries, furniture, floors, ceilings, statuary, etc. in pretty much every room. If you’re into royally monogrammed table settings, they had plenty of those too; I blitzed through those rooms. Photos, sadly, were prohibited inside the rooms, but there’s one from the staircase below.
The Prado
If the Reina Sofia left me slightly disappointed, the Prado surpassed expectations once again. The Prado is absolutely enormous. Although I had thought it was a converted palace, in fact it was designed in the late 18th century and built largely in the early 19th century specifically to be a museum.
The Prado’s focus is on art from the 15th to 19th centuries. Within that time period, its collection is concentrated on Spanish artists, both the exceedingly famous (El Greco, Velasquez, Goya) and the lesser-known (to foreigners, at least). But in addition to the Spanish art, it has a very large collection of work from the Dutch masters. This collection includes the largest in the world (according to the Prado itself) of Hieronymus Bosch, in addition to numerous works from the Brueghels, Rubens, and others.
We had also seen large numbers of works by the Dutch masters at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. If it seems a little odd that such large collections of Dutch painting would be in Vienna and Madrid, it’s important here to remember that the Netherlands and Belgium, Greater Austria, and Spain were all part of the Holy Roman Empire for much of the 16th and 17th centuries. Emperor Charles V was actually born in Hapsburg Netherlands, also known as Spanish Netherlands, and, subsequently as Austrian Netherlands.
Historical interlude aside, we enjoyed a number of the Dutch paintings, including Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and Breughel (the elder)’s Triumph of Death.
We also appreciated some of the great works of Spanish art, like Velasquez’s Las Meninas and Goya’s 2nd of May and 3rd of May. The 3rd of May has always really captivated me. It depicts the execution of a number of Spanish rebels who had created an uprising against the militarily imposed authority of the Bonapartes (Napoleon’s brother José was put in charge of Spain after the Napoleonic conquest).
The way the light shines just on the man about to be executed as he heroically stares the executioners in the face is just exceptional.
Templo de Debod, Malasaña, and Chueca
After visiting the Palacio Real, we walked north, through the Plaza de España, to the Templo de Debod, an Egyptian temple gifted to Spain in the 1960s in a park overlooking the valley to the east and back south to the Palacio Real. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather and a very talented Brazilian busker, so we hung out for a while on the bench staring up at one of the few glimpses we’ll get of the fall leaves this year.
From here we walked east through a nice multicultural neighborhood called Malasaña and then on to the next neighborhood over called Chueca. I’m sure I had walked through parts of these areas before, but I didn’t have much of a recollection. There were a number of very nice buildings, and all manner of restaurants, from cheap Doner stands to fine dining, traditional Spanish cuisine, and trendy modern coffee shops.
Parque del Retiro
Later that day, around dusk, we walked around Parque del Retiro. Parque del Retiro was formerly the grounds of the Palacio del Retiro, but it became public in the late 19th century. Topographically, it occupies a hillside and top that offers excellent views back over the city. And within, there are a number of interesting architectural features, like a monument to Alfonso XII, an outpost of the Reina Sofia, and a glass palace.
On the Sunday evening when we visited, the roads through the park were all shut down and many people were out exercising. Many were jogging, some were bicycling, a few were skateboarding, but it seemed like the most common mode of self-propelled transport was roller-blading. It remains (to us) an unexplained curiosity of Spain that this passé (in the rest of the world) pastime retains such allure.
There were many paths through the park, several places to grab a little snack, boats to rent to go for a paddle in the pond, an athletic center, an outdoor exercise area, a rose garden, various children’s play areas. It is, truly, an exceptional park. It may even be the best park we’ve visited on this trip, though for the final determination on that front you’ll have to stay tuned for our best-of post(s) coming upon our return.
Dining
We also ate extremely well during our time Madrid. In part, this may have been because we made no attempt whatsoever to eat traditional Spanish cuisine. But also, we had a wide selection of alternative cuisines to choose from.
Nearly across the street from our hotel in the neighborhood of Lavapies, there was a market, Mercado Antón Martín. Split over two stories, both floors contained a mix of places to buy groceries (fruit stands, fish mongers, butchers, etc.) and places to eat prepared food. On the first half-day, either side of our visit to the Reina Sofia, we went here for a meal. The first was quite good Mexican; the second was simply good sushi.
We also went to the much more touristic Mercado de San Miguel, right next to the Plaza Mayor for dinner on the last night. Although the building is a stunning glass-enclosed old market hall, all the food we tried (four different stalls in all!) was mediocre at best. I’d recommend stopping in for a drink but nothing more.
We had lunch in Chueca on both of our full days in Madrid. The first was at a place called the Hummusería, which served, as you might imagine, a variety of hummus dishes (and other vegetarian Middle Eastern cuisine). We split a large platter of hummus and a shakshuka.
The next day, we had lunch at a local ramen chain. (For anyone concerned about my adherence to food rules, I got a broth-less ramen, so it didn’t count as soup.) This was another menú del día situation, so we got some absurd quantity of food at roughly 60% normal menu prices.
The best meal, however, was dinner one night in Lavapies. It was a non-ethnocentric menu in an informal setting with friendly staff, the sort of thing it has been hard for us to find elsewhere in Spain. The seabass and tuna tataki were both excellent. It was one of our best meals of the trip.
What’s Next
Now we’re in Barcelona. Given how great our experience was in Madrid, I’m slightly worried it will disappoint by comparison. It is a place I love so much I made an extra trip to visit by myself when I was here abroad. Let’s see if it lives up to my recollection.
5 more nights before we fly back to the US.