Near the Plaza de la Cibeles and overlooking the Parque del Retiro you will find the four storey 19th century mansion that is the home of the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas. This excellent museum is certainly worth a long visit.

In the museum’s 60 rooms you can admire over 30.000 artefacts that graced the palaces and mansions of 16th to 20th century Spain. The collection is arranged in chronological order and from floor to floor you can see the changes in taste and fashion of the Spanish upper-class.

The collection includes 16th and 17th century Gothic crosses, carvings, alabaster figurines and tapestries. You can marvel at Baroque four-poster beds, furniture and exquisitely detailed dollhouses, toys and musical instruments as well as ceramics from Talavera de la Reina, silverware and crystal glassware. A small chapel is richly decorated with leather tapestries.

Undoubtedly, the best part of the museum is to be found on the 4th floor, where an 18th century Valencia kitchen has been installed. As well as original cooking utensils, pots and pans, you can admire a wonderful panel made of over 1500 hand painted ceramic tiles, depicting domestic servant life of that time.

When you visit the Museo Naval on the Paseo del Prado, don’t forget to take some identification with you (passport, driver’s licence, etc), as you will need to show it before you can admire the artefacts in this impressive museum.

Arranged in chronological order, the museum houses a collection from the 15th century to the present day and is clearly a tribute to Spanish naval superiority. The model ships are to exact scale and most of them were made at the same time that their life-sized counterparts were built. You will, of course find a model of the Santa Maria, the flagship of Christopher Columbus’ first expedition to the Bahamas.

In another part of the museum you will find figureheads, artillery, compasses, brass sextants, weapons and uniforms. There are also portraits of Spanish sailors, paintings of battles and many navigation charts, including a map executed in 1500, which is the first chart of America ever to be made.

One room is devoted to famous Spanish achievements and navigation instruments from the 15th century to the high-tech devices of the present day. You will see reproductions of ships cabins and a collection of curios taken from shipwrecks.

There is one small drawback to the museum: it is difficult to find a good angle to take photos without too much reflection from the lighting over the glass cases.

Founded by Baron Heinrich Tyssen-Bornemisza and his son Hans, the Museo Tyssen-Bornemisza is housed in a 19th century Neo-Classical mansion near the Prado Museum. It is one of the finest private art collections in the world and was ceded to Spain by Baron Hans in 1992.

The museum is part of the “Golden Triangle of Art” and has a truly wonderful collection of Impressionist and Expressionist European and American art, Renaissance, Mannerism, Rococo and Romanticism art dating from the 13th to the late 20th century.

The Baron and his son weren’t lovers of religious art, so in this museum you will find few religious paintings, but mainly portraits and landscapes executed by great artists such as Picasso, Van Gogh, Degas and Cézanne. In 2004, the Baroness Carmen Tyssen-Bornemisza (widow of Baron Hans) lent her extensive art collection to the museum.

You can admire Ghirlandaio’s “Portrait of Giovanna Tournabuoni”; Carpaccio’s wonderful “Portrait of a Knight”; “Our Lady of the Dry Tree” by Petrus Christus and a diptych of the “Annunciation” by Van Eyck. In the part of the museum devoted to Pop Art you will find the original “Woman in Bath” by Roy Lichtenstein.

When you have finished your visit, you can have a good meal or a drink in the museum’s café/restaurant.

The Museo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Fine Arts Museum) was founded in 1752 and while it might not be as grand as other museums in Madrid, it is one of the most important and is certainly a must for lovers of Spanish art.

Housed in the 18th century Goyeneche Palace not far from Puerto del Sol, the museum proudly displays over 1500 paintings and 600 sculptures dating from the 15th century to the present day. It is also the headquarters of the Academy of Art and Picasso and Dali were once students at the Academy.

In the section for foreign artists you will be able to admire important works by Van Dyck, Rubens, Raphael and Titian, and “Spring”, one of the wonderful 16th century “Four Seasons” paintings by Arcrimboldo.

Spanish works are represented by El Greco, Murillo Ribera, Velázquez and Zurbaran. A whole room is devoted to Goya, where you will find two self-portraits and “The Madhouse”. Another room is dedicated to Picasso and the exhibits include a part of his collection of drawings from the famous “Suite Vollard”.

The Museo de Calcografia Nacional in the same building and here you can see the original chalcography plates used by Goya. You can also buy limited edition prints.

House museums are always an interesting way of learning about the life of the occupant and the Casa Museo Lope de Vega is no exception.

You will find the museum in a charming three storey 17th century building in the street named after one of his fellow playwrights – Cervantes. Lope de Vega spent the last 25 years of his life in this house where he wrote several rather religious-minded plays and poems.

The furniture and ornaments, while typical of late 16th and early 17th century Spain, are nonetheless reproductions of Lope de Vega’s actual furniture and personal belongings – the originals were divided among his children after his death in 1635. This doesn’t take anything away from the charm of this small museum, which depicts life in the Golden Age of Baroque Literature. The gardens are lovely, with a well and fruit trees that Lope de Vegas mentions in his diaries.

Lope de Vega is little known outside Spain, where he is considered one of the greatest writers of Western literature. During his life he wrote over 1800 plays, 9 epic poems, 7 novels and novellas and over 3000 sonnets. He had a very complicated love life: he was married twice, but had several children by various mistresses. Even when he joined the priesthood in 1614 he kept up his romantic trysts!

The Museo del Prado is a museum and art gallery located in Madrid, the capital of Spain. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture, it also contains important collections of more than 5,000 drawings, 2,000 prints, 1,000 coins and medals, and almost 2,000 decorative objects and works of art. Sculpture is represented by more than 700 works and by a smaller number of sculptural fragments. The painting collection comprises about 7,800 paintings, of which only about 1,300 are at public display, mainly because of the museum's lack of space. A new, recently opened wing enlarged the display area by about 400 paintings, and it is currently used mainly for temporary expositions. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in Madrid, and it is considered to be among the greatest museums of art in the world.

When you arrive at the Caixa Forum you will be immediately struck by two aspects of this extraordinary building. The first thing to draw your eye is the vertical garden adjoining the Forum; the second feature will take your breath away: the building appears to be floating off the ground!

When the Caixa Foundation acquired the disused power station they wanted to create a modern multicultural centre, but the building was classified as an historical monument and they couldn’t have it pulled down. Instead they hired Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron who created this truly amazing building, incorporating the ancient station with top floors in “rusted” steel. To make the building “float”, they removed the crumbling base to create a covered plaza and provide the entrance to the Forum.

There is a central staircase to take visitors of the 2000 square metres of the exposition rooms from the two underground levels to the top floor where the administration offices and a restaurant are to be found. The underground levels house an auditorium and a theatre. On the other floors you will find a library, a bookshop, exposition rooms that house both temporary and permanent exhibitions of post-modern art, conference rooms and concert rooms.

The vertical garden is over 25 metres high and is a beautiful contrast to the brick and steel Forum. The garden was designed by the French botanist Patrick Blanc, who invented the concept of mural gardens.

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain. It is located in Madrid, near the Atocha train and metro stations, at the southern end of the so-called Golden Triangle of Art (located along the Paseo del Prado and also comprising the Museo del Prado and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza). The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art. Highlights of the museum include excellent collections of Spain's two greatest 20th century masters, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí. Certainly the most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's great painting Guernica. The Reina Sofía also has fine collections of the works of Juan Gris, Joan Miró, Julio González, Pablo Gargallo, Lucio Muñoz, Luis Gordillo, Jorge Oteiza, José Gutiérrez Solana and many other significant artists.

Near the Parque del Buen Retiro, just opposite the Atocha railway station you will find the Museo Nacional de Antropolgia, which is Spain’s oldest museum of anthropology.

The museum first opened its doors in 1875 with the aim of promoting understanding and tolerance of diverse cultures across the world. The five continents are represented in this excellent collection.

You can admire objects of everyday life, ritual artifacts, weapons, clothes and icons pertaining to the religious beliefs of tribes from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania. They are set out in chronological and regional order on the three floors of the museum.

You shouldn’t miss the three-faced Fang Mask from Equatorial Guinea, the Fang Headdress from Cameroon, an exquisitely wrought 19th century snuff box from the Philippines, the delicate figurines of the Hindu god Shiva, the fragile Amazonian pottery including a vase used by the Shipibo Indians. There is also a splendid partial reproduction of the Cave of Altamira.

If you like rather gruesome exhibitions, you will be happy to visit the ground floor rooms where you will find various mummies, the skeleton of a giant and rows upon rows of glass fronted cabinets full of skulls.

On Saturday afternoons and on Sunday, the admission to the museum is free of charge.