If you want to visit Thyssen Museum, guided tours are the best way to discover its masterpieces without getting lost, as it is full of rooms. And if you’d like to have an official tour guide to help you, you can count on me to walk through this amazing museum, located in the heart of Paseo del Prado. Have a look to this page and take note of my suggestions.
- Email: ricardo.dominguez.medina@gmail.com
- Phone (calls and WhatsApp): +34 602505947
Why to visit Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
If I’m true, being a tour guide in Thyssen Museum of Madrid isn’t easy at all: there are many masterpieces and it’s complicated to discard some of them! Unlike Prado and Reina Sofia museums, the other ‘angles’ of the Golden Triangle of Art, here you won’t find the best painting of any artist, as you can see with Las Meninas by Velázquez, The Third of May 1808 by Goya and The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch in the Prado and Guernica by Picasso in the Reina Sofia.
However, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is the most complete one in Madrid. It includes almost all periods in History of Art, all artistic movements and some of the best artists of all time: from Italian Trecento to Avant-garde, with a rich collection of portraits and landscape painting. There are no gaps in its collection!
That’s why I’ve always considered it as the best place for students to learn about History of Art. Thyssen Museum guided tours are a nice and useful way to review lessons before an University-access exam. It is also a good art gallery for collectors, as here they can evaluate and compare artists, understand the evolution of Painting and, after all, widen their knowledge before deciding what to purchase.
In fact, this museum is the result of the good decisions of Thyssen-Bornemisza family, composed by several generations of art collectors. Especially, two barons: Heinrich and Hans Heinrich. The latter married Carmen Cervera and she, already baroness, had a key role to bring the collection from Lugano (Switzerland) to Madrid.
Totally, Spanish State acquired 775 art pieces and they are now part of the permanent collection. In addition, we have to count several hundreds of paintings from Carmen Thyssen Collection, which stay here as a loan. All this is spread in three floors, following a chronological order, transforming the Thyssen Museum guided tours into an amazing time travel. The building has also a specific place for temporary exhibitions, which are often really interesting.
How my Thyssen Museum guided tours are
If you don’t have any suggestion, we can organize the route as I like: a wide 90 minutes itinerary, including about twenty paintings, in front of which we will stay no more than 5 minutes. That way, the walk will flow easily, but deep enough to taste the collection of the museum and, after all, to travel through the History of Art.
In fact, I like to conceive my Thyssen Museum guided tours as a ‘tasting menu’, including:
- ‘Classic’ starters: Caravaggio, Van Eyck, Baldung Grien…
- First course of portraits: 17th century Dutch painters, Antonello da Messina, Rembrandt, Edouard Manet…
- Main course of landscapes: Italian vedutists, French Impressionists and, of course, the Post-Impressionist Van Gogh, among others
- Dessert of Avant-garde artists, like Picasso, Dalì and Magritte
Conditions of my Thyssen Museum guided tours
The cost of my Thyssen Museum guided tours in Madrid depends on different aspects, like the date or the number of visitors, but it doesn’t include tickets (more info here). The route takes 90 minutes. Considering that we have to meet some minutes before to leave the bags in the cloakroom and to test the sound system, we’ll be together about 1 hour and 45 minutes. There are two type of groups:
- Private group: if you want to walk through the rooms with no other people, I can organize Thyssen Museum guided tours for families, couples or even single travellers. And of course, for agency groups
- Open group: if the day of your tour I find other people willing to be part of a group with other participants, we can form an open group. That way, the price can be divided into the number of participants
Other details of the tour
Although I’m not part of this institution but an official tour guide, in Thyssen Museum there are other details that I want to show you here:
- Sound system: all the Thyssen Museum guided tours must use radioguides, even if we are two people. So I will speak with a microphone and you will hear me through your earphones. This system costs 1e per person
- Unlike in Prado Museum and some rooms of Reina Sofia Museum, you can take pictures of the paintings. But you can’t use the flash
- You can’t eat nor drink inside the rooms. You can find a cafe on the ground floor
- All the Thyssen Museum guided tours must be booked days in advance. Otherwise, we may not find tickets for the wanted hour or day
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