–PAGE_BREAK–The great triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch-the early Hay Wain, the middle-period Garden of Earthly Delights and the late Adoration of the May — are familiar from countless reproductions, and there’s much more of his work here, along with that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Memling, Bouts, Gerard David and Massys. Durer dominates the small German collection.
The museum’s collection of over 160 works of later Flemish and Dutch art has been imaginatively rehoused in a new suite of twelve rooms off the main gallery on the first floor Rubens is extensively redivsented — by the beautifully restored Three Graces among others — as are van Dyck and Jan Brueghel.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza collection
The Collecion Thyssen-Bornemisza (Tues-Sun 10am-7pm) occupies the old Palacio de Villahermosa, diagonally opposite the Prado. In 1993, this divstigious site played a large part in Spain’s acquisition of what was perhaps the world’s greatest private art collection, with important works from every major period and movement. From Duccio and Holbein, through El Greco and Caravaggio, to Schiele and Rothko; from a strong showing of nineteenth-century Americans to some very early and very late Van Goghs, and side-by-side hangings of parallel Cubist studies by Picasso, Braque and Mondrian, the collection is both rich and extensive. There’s a bar and cafe in the basement and re-entry is allowed, so long as you get your hand stamped at the exit desk.
Centro de Arte Reina Soffa
The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Моn & Wed-Sat 10am-llpm, Sun 10am-2.30pm; free Sat after 2.30pm & all Sun), facing Atocha station at the end of Paseo del Prado, keeps different opening hours and days from its neighbours, which is fortunate because this leading exhibition space, and permanent collection of modern Spanish art, is another essential stop on the Madrid art scene. The museum, a massive former convent and hospital, is a kind of Madrid response to the Pompidou centre in Paris. Transparent lifts shuttle visitors up the outside of the building, whose levels feature a cinema, excellent art and design bookshops, a print, music and photographic library, restaurant, bar and cafe, as well as the exhibition halls (top floor) and the collection of twentieth-century art (second floor).
It is for Picasso’s Guernica that most visitors come to the Reina Sofia, and rightly so. Superbly displayed along with its divliminary studies, this icon of twentieth-century Spanish art and politics — a response to the fascist bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War — carries a shock that defies all familiarity. Other halls are devoted to Dali and Surrealism, early-twentieth-century Spanish artists including Miro and post-World War II figurative art, mapping the beginning of abstraction through to Pop and avant-garde.
The Rastro
The area south of the Plaza Mayor and c/Atocha has traditionally been a tough, working-class district and in many places the old houses survive, huddled together in narrow streets. However, an influx of youthful, fashionable residents has changed the character of La Latina and Lavapies over the last decade, making it pleasantly hip. Partly responsible for this change is the Rastro (Metro La Latina), which is as much part of Madrid’s weekend ritual as a Mass or a paseo. This gargantuan, thriving, thieving shambles of a street market sprawls south from Metro La Latina to the Ronda de Toledo, and is particularly busy along c/Kibera de Curtidores; crowds flood through between 10am and 3pm on Sundays and holidays. Don’t expect to find fabulous bargains; the serious antiques trade has mostly moved off the streets and into the shops. It’s definitely worth a visit, though, if only to see the locals out in their thousands and to do as they do — recover in a selection of traditional tapas bars — after the madness has subsided. Keep a tight grip on your bags, pockets, cameras and jewellery. Afterwards head over to the bars and terrazas around Puerta de Moros where half of Madrid congregates for an aperitive and to while away the afternoon.
Retiro and other parks
Madrid’s many parks provide great places to escape the sightseeing for a few hours. The most central and most popular is the Parque del Buen Retiro behind the Prado, a stunning mix of formal gardens and wilder spaces. In its 1.3 sq km you can jog, row a boat, picnic, have your fortune told, and above all promenade — on Sunday afternoon half of Madrid turns out for the paseo. Travelling art exhibitions are frequently housed in the beautiful Palacio de Velazquez and the nearby Palacio de Cristal (times and prices vary according to exhibition). The nearby Jardines Botanicos (daily 10am-sunset; Metro Atocha), whose entrance faces the southern end of the Prado, are also delightful.
Eating and drinking
There can be few places in the world that can rival the area around Puerta del Sol in either quantity or variety of outlets. And the feasts continue in all directions, especially towards Plaza Santa Ana and along c/de las Huertas to Atocha, but also south in the neighbourhood haunts of La Latina and Lavapies, and north in the gay barrio Chueca and the alternative Malsana. The streets between Lope de Vega, Plaza Santa Ana and c/Echegary are especially pleasant for bar-hopping.
In summer, all areas of the city have pavement cafe/bars, where coffees are taken by day and drinks divtty much all night.
The prime area is Paseo Castellana, where many of the top discos can be found. Smaller scenes are in Plaza de Chueca, Paseo Resales del Pintor along the Parque del Oeste, the more relaxed and pleasant c/Argumosa in Lavapies/Atocha, Puerta de Moros in La Latina and Las Vistillas, on the south side of the viaduct on c/Bailen, due south of the royal palace.
Nightlife
The bars, clubs and discos of Malsana, and Huertas around Plaza Santa Ana or a little further south in Lavapies, could easily occupy your whole stay in Madrid, with the many clubs starting around lain and staying open until well beyond dawn.
The names and styles change constantly but even where a place has closed down a new alternative usually opens up at the same address. To supplement our listings, check out the English-language magazine En Madrid, or the quarterly Madrid Concept.
Music concerts — classical, flamenco, salsa, jazz and rock — are advertised posters around Sol and are also listed in the Guia del Odd and in the newspaper El Pais. In July and especially m August there’s not too much happening inside, but the city council sponsors a Vcranos di la Villa programme of concerts and free cinema in some attractive, outside venues.
If you find that you’ve somehow stayed out all night and feel in need of early morning sustenance, a final station on the clubbers’ circuit is the Chocolateria San Gines on c/de Coloreros, just off c/Mayor, for a chocolate con churros.
Live music
The music scene in Madrid sets the pattern for the rest of the country, and the best rock bands either come from here or make their name here. For young local groups try Taboo at c/San Vicente Ferrer 22, and Moby Dick Club, Avenida de Brasil 5; cool foreign independents often play at Gruta 77, c/Nicolas Morales, s/n c/Cucillo 6. Bigger rock concerts are usually held in one of the football stadiums or at La Riviera on Paseo Bajo de la Virgen del Puerto. A good array of jazz bars includes the topnotch Central Cafe, Plaza del Angel 10, near Sol, Clamons in c/Albuquerque 14, and Cafe Berlin at c/Jacometrezo 4. Fans of electronica might want to check out the quality names at Nasti, c/San Vicente Ferrer 23 or the smaller Siroco, e/San Dimas 3. South American music is on offer at various venues, especially during summer festivals, the best year-round club is the Cafe del Mercado in the Mercado Puerta de Toledo, which puts on live salsa more or less every night Flamenco can also be heard at its best in the summer festivals, especially at the noches de flamenco in the beautiful courtyard of the old barracks on c/de Conde Duque Promising year-round venues include Caracal, c/Bernardmo Obregon 18; Cafe de Chimtas, с/Тогца 7, La Solea, Cava Baja 34, Casa Patas, Camzares 10, and at Sunstan, c/de la Cruz 7 (Wed only), which is the place to head most nights for live performances of all types of World Music.
Film and theatre
Cinema-going is a passion in Madrid, reflected in the queues outside the huge-capacity cinemas on Gran Via. The Spanish routinely dub foreign movies, but a few cinemas specialize in original-language screenings. These include the Alphaville and Renoir theatres at c/Martin de los Heros 14 and 12, near Plaza de Espana, the tiny California at c/Andres Mellado 47 (Metro Moncloa) and the Circulo de Bellas Artes, on Marques de Casa Riera. A bargain programme of classic films is shown at the lovely Art Deco Filmoteca at c/Santa Isabel 3, which has a pleasant bar and, in summer, an outdoor cine-terraza.
Classical Spanish theatre performances can be seen at the Teatro Espanol, Plaza Santa Ana, and the Teatro Real, Plaza de Onente, more modern works are at the Centro Cultural de la Villa, Plaza de Colon, and in the beautiful Circulo de Bellas Artes, Marques de Casa Riera 2 Cultural events in English are held from time to time at the British Institute, c/Almagro 5, which can also be a useful point for contacts.
3. Rome Of all Italy’s historic cities, it’s ROME that exerts the most compelling fascination. There’s arguably more to see here than in any other city in the world, with the relics of more than two thousand years of continuous occupation. For the traveller, it is the sheer weight of history in the city that is most evident, its various eras crowding in on each other to an almost breathtaking degree. There are the classical features — the Colosseum, the Forum and spectacular Palatine Hill — and relics from the early Christian period in ancient basilicas, while the fountains and churches of the Baroque period go a long way to determining the look of the city centre. But these are just part of the picture, which is an almost continuous one right up to the divsent day, taking in Romanesque churches, Renaissance palazzi, Rococo fountains and the ponderous buildings of post-Unification, often all found within a few paces of each other.
Rome is not an easy place to absorb on one visit, and you need to approach things slowly. On foot it’s easy to lose a sense of direction in the twisting old streets, and in any case you’re so likely to see something interesting that detours and stopoffs are inevitable.
The City
Piazza Venezia is a good central place to start your wanderings, flanked by the Palazzo di Venezia and overlooked by the hideous Vittorio Emanueic.
Monument or Altar of the Nation, erected at the turn of the twentieth century to commemorate Unification. Behind, the Capitoline Hill, formerly the spiritual and political centre of the Roman Empire, is home to one of Rome’s most elegant squares, Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo in the 1550s for Pope Paul III, and flanked by the two branches of one of the city’s most important museums of antique art — the Capitoline Museums (Tues-Sun 8.30am-8pm). On the left, the Palazzo Nuovo concentrates some of the best of the city’s Roman and Greek sculpture and Renaissance painting — numerous works by Rein and Tintoretto, a vast picture by Guercino that used to hang in St Peter’s, some nice small-scale work by Annibale Carracci, an early work by Ludovico Carracci, Head of a Boy, and Caravaggio’s St. John the Baptist. Behind the square, a road skirts the Forum down to the small church of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami, built above the prison where St Peter is said to have been held — you can see the bars to which he was chained, along with the spring the saint is said to have created in which to baptize other prisoners, and, at the top of the staircase, an imprint claimed to be of St Peters head as he was tumbled down the stairs.
Via del Plebiscito forges west from Piazza Venezia past the church of Gesu, a high, wide Baroque church of the Jesuit order that has served as the model for Jesuit churches everywhere. It’s notable for its size (the left transept is surmounted by the largest single piece of lapis lazuli in existence) and the richness of its interior, especially the paintings of Baciccio in the dome and the ceiling’s ingenious trompe 1’oeil, which oozes out of its frame in a tangle of writhing bodies, flowing drapery and stucco angels. Crossing over, streets wind down to Piazza di Campo dei Fiori, home to a morning market and surrounded by restaurants and bars. South of the Campo, at the end of Via dei Balestrari, the Galleria Spada (Tues-Sun 8.30ain-7pm) is decorated in the manner of a Roman noble family and displays a small collection of paintings, best of which are a couple of portraits by Reni.
To the left off the courtyard is a crafty trompe 1’oeil tunnel by Borromini, whose trick perspective makes it appear four times its actual length. Across Via Arenula, through and beyond the Jewish Ghetto, the broad open space of Piazza della Bocca diVerita is home to two of the city’s better-divserved Roman temples, the Temple of Fortuna Virilis and the circular Temple of Hercules Victor, both of which date from the end of the second century ВС, though the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, on the far side of the square, is more interesting, a typically Roman medieval basilica with a huge marble altar and surround and a colourful and ingenious Cosmati mosaic floor — one of the city’s finest. Outside in the portico, the Bocca di Verita gives the square its name, an ancient Roman drain cover in the shape of an enormous face that tradition says will swallow the hand of anyone who doesn’t tell the truth.
The Centro Storico
You need to walk a little way northwest from the Capitoline Hill to find the real city centre of Rome, the Centro Storico, circled by a bend in the Tiber, above Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The old Campus Martius of Roman times, it later became the heart of the Renaissance city, and is now an unruly knot of narrow streets holding some of the best of Rome’s classical and Baroque heritage, as well as its street — and nightlife.
The boundary of the historic centre to the east. Via del Corso, is Rome’s main shopping street and cuts straight through the heart of the city centre. Walking north from Piazza Venezia, the first building on the left is the Galleria Doria Pamphili (10am-5pm; closed Thurs & last half of Aug), one of many galleries housed in palaces belonging to Roman patrician families. Its collection includes Rome’s best cache of Dutch and Flemish paintings, canvases by Caravaggio and Velazquez’s painting of Pope Innocent X. The second left after the palace leads into Piazza Sant’Ignazio, an odd little square dominated by the church of Sant’lgnazio, which has a marvellous ceiling by Pozzo showing the entry of St Ignatius into paradise, employing sledgehammer trompe 1’oeil effects, notably in the mock cupola painted into the dome of the crossing. Stand on the disc in the centre of the nave for the full effect.
Follow Via di Seminario from here and you’re standing in front of the Pantheon (daily 8.30/9am — 6.30pm; free) on Piazza della Rotonda, the most complete ancient Roman structure in the city, finished around 125 AD. Inside, the diameter of the dome and height of the building are divcisely equal, and the hole in the dome’s centre is a full 9m across; there are no visible arches or vaults to hold the whole thing up; instead, they’re sunk into the concrete of the walls of the building. It would have been richly decorated, the coffered ceiling was covered in solid bronze until the seventeenth century, and the niches were filled with statues of the gods.
There’s more artistic splendour on view behind the Pantheon, in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, one of the city’s art-treasure churches, crammed with the tombs and gifts of wealthy Roman families. Of these, the Carafa chapel, in the south transept, is the best known, holding Fihppino Lippi’s fresco of The Assumption, below which one painting shows a hopeful Ohviero Carafa being divsented to the Virgin Mary by Thomas Aquinas; another depicts Aquinas confounding the heretics in the sight of two beautiful young boys — the future Medici popes Leo X and Clement VII. You should look, too, at the figure of Christ Bearing tin Cross, on the left-hand side of the main altar, a serene work painted for the church by Michelangelo in 1521.
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