The Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Spain, is one of the world’s largest and most renowned art museums, with a collection of over 20,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the 19th century.
The Prado museum is housed in an imposing neoclassical building, completed in 1785 after a design by architect Juan de Villanueva.
The building was commissioned by King Charles III to accommodate the Royal collections of Natural History, and transformed into an art museum opened to the public by his grandson, King Ferdinand VII, in 1819.
The museum complex also incorporated the only two remaining wings of the former Palacio del Buen Retiro, designed in the 17th century by architect Alonso Carbonell, known as the Casón and the Salón de Reinos (Hall of Realms).