Esp
The Prado National Museum is one of the most important in the world in European painting from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as one of the most visited. The building, which houses works by Velázquez, Goya, Rubens and Bosch, was designed by the architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785, as the Cabinet of Natural Sciences, by order of Charles III.
However, the final destination of this building would not be clear until his grandson Ferdinand VII, encouraged by his wife Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza, made the decision to use this building for the creation of a Royal Museum of Paintings and Sculptures. Enlarged on several occasions, it would not be until 2007 when the most important expansion of its history was completed, carried out by the architect Rafael Moneo.
At present, the Prado Museum forms a museum campus consisting of: the Villanueva building (22,043 m2), the Cloister of the Jerónimos (14,447 m2), the Casón del Buen Retiro (5,506 m2), the administrative building on Ruiz de Alarcón Street (3,326 m2), and the Salón de Reinos of the Buen Retiro Palace (45,322 m2).
Together with the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum forms the so-called Art Triangle of Madrid, a mecca for numerous tourists from all over the world. It is located in the Palacio de Villahermosa, a building that underwent several transformations until it became the museum of today.
Work began in January 1990, under the orders of architect Rafael Moneo, with the challenge of adapting the old palace to the conditions and services required by the works of art. During this process, the main entrance of the building was moved from the Carrera de San Jerónimo to the garden on Zorrilla Street, turning the north façade into the starting point for the new structure.
A few years later, the museum was enlarged to provide 50% more floor space. Carried out by the team of architects Manuel Baquero, Robert Brufau and the BOPBAA studio, the aim was to convert the two buildings, the old and the new, into a single space, capable of sharing activities and routes. To this end, the buildings attached to the Villahermosa Palace were partially demolished, maintaining the rear bay and its entire façade for renovation. The relationship of the century-old facades with the neighborhood was maintained, while the intervention freed up part of the old plot to erect a modern building tailored for the most public uses: the exhibition halls. The final result is an "L" shaped building mainly for offices and internal services, which envelops a new building connected to the Villahermosa Palace and destined to be used as an exhibition area.
The Banco de España created its Archive on January 9, 1783. Since then it has conserved a large collection of documents, from the middle of the 18th century to the present day. These funds occupy about 40 linear kilometers of shelves, of which a quarter are considered historical and the rest related to the management of the institution.
All of them are preserved in the building of the central offices of the Bank of Spain, one of the most emblematic buildings of Madrid and Spanish architecture of the nineteenth century. With facades facing Plaza de Cibeles, Alcalá Street and Paseo del Prado, it was built in 1884 by architects Eduardo de Adaro Magro, José Yarnoz Larrosa and Severino Sainz de la Lastra.
With a total built area of 4,736 square meters, consisting of three sections with eclectic decoration, giant columns and a chamfered façade, the building has been enlarged three times, in 1927, in 1969 and in 2006, when Impernor Asbitra helped to seal the basement walls in order to safely preserve the entire historical archive accumulated by the Banco de España throughout its history.
As a curious fact, we inform you, as hard as it may be to believe, that on the roof of the Bank of Spain there is a heliport which we waterproofed in 2013. At present, it is fully operational although it has never been used.
The Archive of the Biblioteca Nacional de España houses two document collections: the archive of the Biblioteca Nacional de España, which contains the documents produced and received by the library in the course of its activities from its foundation in 1712 to the present day; and the archive of the Junta Facultativa de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, a collection of extraordinary importance for the knowledge of the history of Spanish Archives, Libraries and Museums over the course of a century.
The Palace of the Library and Museums, which houses the National Library and its Archives, designed by the architect Francisco Jareño, began to be built in 1866 and opened to the public for the first time on March 16, 1896.
The magnificent building where the archive is located has been a National Monument since 1983. The façade, adorned with six sculptures and eleven medallions representing the great authors of Spanish literature, and the beautiful pediment, sculpted in marble by Agustín Querol, which symbolically, they say, transmits wisdom to us if we decide to climb the staircase and enter the Library.
The Museum of History of Madrid, which houses a complete tour of the history of the Spanish capital, occupies the building of the Royal Hospice of San Fernando, built in the eighteenth century by the architect Pedro de Ribera and is considered one of the most representative works of Spanish Baroque.
In July 2002, the comprehensive rehabilitation of the building began, directed by the architect Juan Pablo Rodríguez Frade, harmonizing respect for the original elements with the adaptation to the most modern museographic criteria, in order to improve visitor service. The reopening, after more than a decade of waiting, finally took place on December 10, 2014.
The Matadero Madrid was a complex of forty-eight buildings dedicated to performing the functions of industrial slaughterhouse and livestock market during the central decades of the twentieth century that today has become a living and changing space at the service of processes that support the construction of the culture of the present and the future.
Designed from the beginning as an "open project", with spaces explicitly left free to allow for future expansion, it did not undergo significant changes during its period of operation as a slaughterhouse. However, after its definitive closure in 1996, the facilities remained unused until 2003, when it was decided to transform it into a cultural space, which opened its doors in 2007.
The General Archive of Simancas, founded by Charles I in 1540 in the castle of Simancas, is the first and oldest official archive of the Crown of Castile. Its documentary collections are made up of two large blocks: those belonging to the Austrian period and those of the Bourbon period.
Inside, not only are conservation and cataloguing tasks carried out on the documents it houses, but it is also a museum and a place where research can be carried out on the basis of its collections. For all this, Unesco awarded it the distinction of World Heritage in 2017 within its Memory of the World category.
The building is unique. The castle we know today is due to the reforms of the sixteenth century, Juan de Herrera and Francisco de Mora. While the wall that surrounds it, the cubes, the battlements, the moat, the entrance and two bridges are from medieval times. On the other hand, the chapel was reformed by the Enríquez family in the 15th century; the present one is a reform of the 1950's and has a beautiful painted starry vault, where the arms of its founders are represented: Don Alonso Enríquez and Doña Mª de Velasco.
In addition, major works have been carried out to preserve the building as a General Archive. Among other valuable rooms , there is a fireproof chamber where most of the documents are kept.
The National Museum of Science and Technology of Alcobendas reopened its doors as MUNCYT on December 12, 2014, making a proposal that merges the museum's collections with scientific and technological dissemination, dealing with topics such as microscopy, film, photography, medicine or technology of everyday life.
The institution consists of a main building of 7,000 square meters, designed by the architect Robert and Esteve Terrades. The center has 12,000 m², distributed over three floors connected by circular ramps that surround the exhibition halls, which cover more than 2,500 m² of the total area.
Today, as the headquarters of MUNCYT, the building is still composed of five large areas inherited from its time as Cosmocaixa: the temporary exhibitions, the permanent exhibition, the auditorium, the digital Planetarium and a large garden-park.
Among the distinctive features of the museum's exterior is the digital Planetarium (which uses 3D images projected onto a hemispherical screen 10 meters in diameter), which can be seen on the roof of the building as a domed metal structure.
