Madrid opened a long-awaited multi-million-dollar gallery on Thursday, bringing hundreds of masterpieces from the royal collection, including works by Caravaggio, Velazquez, and Goya, under one roof. The new Royal Collections Gallery, next to the palace and close to Almudena Cathedral, sits across town from the established institutions of the capital’s “Triangle of Art” – the Prado, the Reina Sofia, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museums.
The project is the most extensive expansion of Madrid’s museums and will be the main venue for exhibits from the collections of the Crown. The gallery’s 62 rooms feature the paintings and treasures owned by the Spanish Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs over five centuries and other art gathered from the region.
Some works have never been shown to the public before, and others have not been seen in the same room for decades. The galleries are arranged chronologically, with the works from the reign of the Habsburg monarchs on the first floor and those of the Bourbon dynasty on the second. The last of the four Caravaggios in Spain, ‘Salome with the Head of John the Baptist,’ is among the exhibits.
Visitors can see samples from possibly the world’s best tapestry collection, and the gallery also has ancient carriages and jewels of royal furniture. The director of Patrimonio Nacional, the agency overseeing the royal collections, says she is confident the gallery will attract visitors worldwide.
The building is a work of art with a sober, simple design that has won ten architectural awards, including the first prize from the Official College of Architects. Its facade is configured based on reinforced concrete pillars covered with granite slabs. Inside, it surprises with spaciousness and luminosity, with views of the park surrounding the gallery.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia will inaugurate the gallery on June 28 to bring the public closer to the royal collections and strengthen the museum’s ties to society. The gallery is expected to draw up to 22,000 visitors daily, with entrance fee for the first days.
The project for a gallery for the collections of the Spanish Crown first surfaced during the anti-monarchy Second Republic in the 1930s but was put on hold when the leftist government seized royal properties. The idea was revived in 1998 when the government’s delegated commission for cultural affairs approved the construction of a new space to house the artworks. Twenty-five years of work have entered the building that will open this summer as the Royal Collections Gallery. Its curator, Alvaro Soler de Campo, says the gallery is the most significant addition to Madrid’s cultural offerings since its city was founded in 1561. Until recently, most royal treasures were scattered in various buildings across the city and the country. The first main home for the collection was destroyed in a 1734 fire, with many of its paintings lost.
