Thyssen-Bornemisza

The smallest and most easily digested of the Golden Triangle's three museums, the Thyssen fills the gaps that the Prado (Spanish and pre-19th century) and the Reina Sofía (modern Spanish) leave. The collection runs chronologically from medieval altarpieces through Italian Renaissance, Dutch Golden Age, French Impressionism, German Expressionism, American post-war abstraction, and Pop Art — a one-museum tour through 700 years of Western painting.

Allow at least two hours. The standard advice is to do the top floor (earliest) first and walk down. The Carmen Thyssen wing, added in 2004, holds the Baroness's own collection of Spanish 19th-century painting and is included with the main ticket. Free on Mondays. The terrace café upstairs is one of the nicer breaks on the Paseo del Prado. Closed Mondays for the main collection.

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A story
The collection was assembled over two generations by the German-Hungarian Thyssen-Bornemisza barons. When in the 1990s the heirs offered to sell it abroad, the Spanish government — encouraged by Carmen Cervera, the Spanish wife of the late Baron — bought it outright for around $350 million, the bargain art deal of the century.