Cason del Buen Retiro

Just outside one of the gates of El Retiro Park, we get this building, right in front of us.

El Casón del Buen Retiro, is one the two buildings that survived the destruction of the Buen Retiro Palace. Built in 1637 by Alonso Carbonell, it was initially designed as a ballroom space for the Court of Felipe IV.

Since 1971 is one of the buildings that make up the Prado Museum. For decades his building has housed 3000 masterpieces of nineteenth-century painting, and Picasso’s Guernica. This famous painting was moved to the Museo Reina Sofia in 1992, and the 19th Century collection has been relocated at Rafael Moneo’s expansion of the Prado Museum.