Museo del Prado

The Prado is the best art museum most people have never prioritised. It doesn't have the Louvre's fame or the Uffizi's Instagram presence, but what it has is Velazquez's Las Meninas, which is the painting that changed how painters thought about painting. You'll stand in front of it in Room 12 and understand immediately. The room is built around it. Everything else in the museum leads to or away from this moment.

Goya gets two entire sections: the early works upstairs are beautiful and luminous, full of colour and social observation. The Black Paintings downstairs are terrifying. Saturn Devouring His Son is in a room with paintings Goya made directly on the walls of his house when he was deaf, isolated, and possibly losing his mind. The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch is in Room 56A and people cluster around it like it's a puzzle, which it basically is. El Greco's long, stretched figures fill a gallery that feels like stepping into a fever dream. And then there's the Rubens room, which has more drama per square metre than most countries' entire national collections.

The EUR15 entry ticket is a bargain for what you're getting. The museum is free in the last two hours before closing (Monday to Saturday 6-8 PM, Sundays 5-7 PM), but it's packed and rushed. Pay the EUR15, come at 10 AM on a weekday, and give yourself three hours minimum. The audio guide (EUR6) is worth it for the Velazquez rooms alone. Skip the temporary exhibitions unless the queue is short. The permanent collection is why you're here.

One practical note: the building is enormous and poorly signposted. Grab a free map at the entrance, decide on three things you want to see, and navigate to those first. Then wander. Trying to see everything systematically will break you by Room 30.