Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Reina Sofía is Spain’s national museum devoted to art of the twentieth century, and its most famous work is Picasso’s Guernica. The museum officially opened on September 10, 1992, and honours Queen Sofía in its name. The building around you began as Madrid’s General Hospital, designed by José de Hermosilla and substantially carried out by Francesco Sabatini.

After the hospital closed, the structure was transformed for art, while a later intervention by Ian Ritchie introduced three glass circulation towers. A further expansion by Jean Nouvel opened in 2005, adding exhibition rooms, auditoriums, a bookshop, restaurants and offices. Inside, Spanish art forms the museum’s main focus, with major holdings by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, alongside works by Joan Miró, Juan Gris and Antoni Tàpies.

The collection also reaches far beyond Spain, bringing together artists including Francis Bacon, Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko and Cindy Sherman. The museum offers a free art library with over 100,000 books, more than 3,500 audio recordings and nearly 1,000 videos. From a former hospital, this place has become a vast home for modern and contemporary art.