AFP: Madrid's Prado Completes Its Spatial Revolution

Madrid - The most prestigious of Spanish museums, the Madrid Prado, has completed its spatial revolution by opening a new modern wing and transforming its inner space modeled after the Paris Louvre with its Pyramid, reported AFP.
    "This is the most significant expansion of the Prado in its history. For the museum, it represents an additional 50 percent of space," explains deputy director of the Prado, Gabriele Finaldi.
    The new wing of the museum opened to the public on Wednesday, October 31; on the eve, it was officially inaugurated by Spanish King Juan Carlos. The first five days allowed visitors to experience the new offerings for free.
    The new spaces are located primarily at the back of the long building situated on Paseo del Prado, which was built in the late 18th century as a natural history museum and a century later used as a royal painting museum.
    The modern building has risen just a few dozen meters behind the main Neoclassical structure opposite the Church of Saint Jerome.
    The simple and elegant brick cube conceals a new large exhibition space. The Prado used it for the first time to open an impressive exhibition of 19th-century Spanish painting, which the museum had not been able to organize until now.
    A particular feature of the new building, designed by Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, is that it contains granite walls of a 17th-century monastery that once adjoined the Church of Saint Jerome within its upper part.
    The monastery, which was in very poor condition, was taken apart stone by stone, restored, and rebuilt inside the modern building in a space specially designated for it, under a glass surface where sculptures are also located.
    The new space also includes a drawing cabinet, conservation and restoration areas for paintings, as well as a lecture hall, library, and café.
    Following the example of the Louvre, the new spaces of the Prado are partially built underground, allowing for the connection of the historic building to the new one without being aesthetically displeasing.
    The vacated space in the historic building, from where the café, library, and others have moved, allows for the display of an additional 400 paintings, which complement the thousand works in the permanent exhibition, among which are paintings by Diego Rodríguez Velázquez, El Greco, and Francisco Goya, which have given the museum its fame.
    The museum is currently visited by more than two million people annually, and its management believes that due to the expansion, over three million visitors will come to see the exhibition.
    The project, which was conceived more than ten years ago, cost a total of 152 million euros (over four billion CZK) and is part of a broader plan aimed at creating a true campus dedicated to art in the Prado district.
    Next year, the adjacent palace Casón del Buen Retiro, which will house a study center for the museum, is set to reopen after renovation. Another nearby building, Salón de Reinos, where a closed military museum was located, will also be incorporated into the Prado's museum complex.
    This modernization, which opens this significant cultural institution a dignified path into the 21st century, is accompanied by a fundamental transformation and enhancement of the museum's website at www.museodelprado.es/.