Spain’s Royal Collections Gallery in Madrid opened to the public on June 29th. With a cost of roughly €170 million, the museum houses 650 works spanning five centuries on show, including masterpieces by Velazquez, Caravaggio, and Goya, among others. According to CNN, the museum’s collection also includes a first edition of Cervantes’ ‘Don Quixote’.
The building, located in the heart of Madrid and next to the Royal Palace, has an area of 40,000 square meters and has so far received 10 architectural awards, including the first prize Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid (2016), the FAD for architecture in 2017 and the American Architecture Prize (2017).
According to local media, long queues have been registered to access the museum with the 10,000 free tickets sold out for the four open days organized by Patrimonio Nacional (Spain’s National Heritage Agency). The first open day of the Royal Collections Gallery was a success. Hundreds of people arrived from early in the morning and stood at the entrance next to the viewpoint of the Royal Palace of Madrid.
A modern building with sober lines, spectacular in dimension.
Ana De la Cueva, President National Heritage
The building is carved into the mountain, from the Campo del Moro to the Plaza de la Armería. It has two entrances: from the cornice of that square, at the level of the Royal Palace, and from the Cuesta de la Vega, at the highest elevation of the Campo del Moro gardens, with magnificent views over the west of the city, the Casa de Campo and the Sierra de Guadarrama. “A modern building with sober lines, spectacular in dimension,” Ana De la Cueva, Patrimonio Nacional’s president told CNN. “The combination of classic art and the Baroque against these lines is very powerful.”
Some of the pieces have never been shown before. An example is ‘Saint Michael the Archangel Defeating the Devil’, a wooden sculpture completed in 1692 by Luisa Roldán, as reported by CNN. Roldán was the first woman appointed as a Spanish court sculptor. “The fundamental thing about Roldán was her quality, which allowed her to escape anonymity and become head of the workshop, ranked higher than her husband,” Leticia Ruiz, director of the Royal Collections, told CNN. “It’s likely that there were many other women in family artist workshops. But who remained anonymous.”
The main entrance to the Gallery is located on Plaza de la Armería. The first hall is dedicated to the Hapsburgs. The collections of tapestries and the Royal Armory can be seen in dialogue with works by Bosch, Titian, El Greco, Ribera, Velázquez and Caravaggio. This floor has a privileged window to the origin of Madrid, including the ninth century wall and the gateway to the city discovered during the construction of the building. The archaeological room explains the history of Madrid and its evolution up to the present day with a video and different didactic resources.
The second hall dedicated to the Bourbons, begins with the plans of the new Royal Palace, built by order of Philip V after the fire of the Alcazar. It ends with the model of the Gallery of the Royal Collections, as an epilogue of the monumental and museum complex of the Palace.
The temporary exhibition that inaugurates this space is ‘In Motion’. Vehicles and carriages of Patrimonio Nacional, which includes fifty pieces, including several carriages, vehicles, sleighs and even a travel litter, which offer visitors the chance to explore the history of the carriage in Spain and its role as a representation of power from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Patrimonio Nacional’s collection of carriages is one of the finest in the world.
The usual opening hours of the Gallery will be from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm (Sundays and holidays until 7.00 pm), with free access from Monday to Thursday from 6.00 pm. The entrance fee will be 14 euros, 7 with reduced rate.
