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 The world-renowned Prado Museum. Among Spain´s contributions to world culture is her art, and represented here are three of its greatest masters--Goya, Velazquez, and El Greco, but you'll also find the great works of Rubens and Titian. The Prado first opened in 1819 to display the Spanish royal art collection. With the anticlerical laws of 1836, many churches, monasteries, and convents were forced to hand over their collections. Now the museum holds some seven thousand pieces of art. After visiting the Prado, we make our way to the Palacio de Oriente usually called the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) it was constructed on the site of a Moorish fortress, destroyed by a fire in 1734. The first stone was placed in 1737 and the Italian architects Juan Bautista Sacchetti and Francisco Sabatini were commissioned for its construction.
 The Queen Sofia museum is in an old, grandiose and austere hospital building, the façade of which is embellished with outdoor glass lifts. The vaulted halls lend themselves wonderfully to the modern art to which the building is now devoted. Apart from its symbolic aspect, the entirely black, white and grey Guernica is, as well as a protest against the horrors of war, an undeniable pictorial masterpiece, summing up all the artistic trends of the time. In addition, the Centre houses a number of works by Spanish artists who have made their mark in the 20C: Juan Gris, one of the most important representatives of Cubism, Joan Miró, represented by paintings and sculptures which form a real retrospective of his work, Julio González, Salvador Dalí (who also knew how to be an artist), the Catalan movement Dau al Set, abstraction (Pablo Palazuelo), the members of the Equipo Crónica, theEl Paso group (Saura, Canogar and others), Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida all show the continuous vitality of Spanish art.
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