Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

The story of how Madrid ended up with one of the world's greatest private art collections reads like a romantic thriller. Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, a Swiss-German steel magnate, had spent decades expanding his father's art collection into a hoard of over 1,600 paintings — the second-largest private collection on Earth after the British Royal Family's. Countries competed to host it. Britain, Germany, and the United States all bid. Then the Baron married his fifth wife, Carmen "Tita" Cervera, a former Miss Spain, and she convinced him the collection belonged in her home country.

The museum opened in 1992 in the Villahermosa Palace, an 18th-century neoclassical building right next to the Prado. A year later, the Spanish government bought the core collection of 775 paintings for $350 million — widely considered one of the greatest art deals in history. The Thyssen fills a specific gap: while the Prado covers old masters and the Reina Sofia handles 20th-century art, the Thyssen bridges both, with particular strength in Impressionism, German Expressionism, and early American painting — all areas the other two museums lack.

Walk through the three floors chronologically and you're taking a compressed journey through eight centuries of Western art: medieval gold-ground altarpieces on the top floor, Dutch landscapes and Caravaggio in the middle, then Monet, Van Gogh, Hopper, and Lichtenstein as you descend. It's the only museum in Madrid where you can see a Duccio and a Rothko under the same roof.

Together with the Prado and the Reina Sofia, the Thyssen completes Madrid's "Golden Triangle of Art" — three world-class museums within a five-minute walk of each other, a concentration of masterpieces that rivals any city on Earth.