Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

Picasso studied here. Dali was expelled from here. Goya directed the painting department. And almost no one visits. The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando is one of Madrid's most extraordinary museums, hiding in plain sight on the busy Calle de Alcala, five minutes from Puerta del Sol. The building has been shaping Spanish art since 1752, when it was established by royal decree, and its collection of paintings from the 15th to 20th centuries rivals many national museums.

Goya's connection runs deepest. He was elected to the Academy in 1780 and became Director of Painting in 1795, teaching classes here until his increasing deafness — the result of a mysterious illness in 1792 — made it impossible. The Academy holds thirteen of his paintings, including the riotous "Burial of the Sardine," a scene of carnivalesque chaos that seems to throb with music and madness.

Picasso arrived in 1897, formally enrolling at the Academy's School of Painting, Sculpture and Etching at just sixteen. He found it stifling. Dali enrolled in 1922, lived in the famous Residencia de Estudiantes nearby, and promptly declared in 1926 that no professor at the Academy was qualified to examine him. He was expelled. Both artists found the institution too rigid for their revolutionary ideas — but both were shaped by it.

The collection goes far beyond its famous alumni. Works by Arcimboldo, Rubens, Bellini, and Zurbaran hang in grand salons that most tourists never discover because they're too busy queuing for the Prado. The Academy also houses a remarkable collection of prints and drawings, including an astonishing 978 copper printing plates used to produce Goya's etchings. Entry is remarkably cheap, the rooms are quiet, and the art is world-class.