Unofficial visitor guide · Madrid
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía · Google Maps
Official audio guide · English Yes · 7 languages · €6
The Museo Reina Sofía is Spain's national museum of modern and contemporary art and the home of Picasso's Guernica. Its audio guide covers the Guernica floor in seven languages, but the contemporary floor in only three. If yours isn't one of them, or you'd rather have the labels read to you, here is what helps.
Independent guide by the makers of Tales of Museums. Not affiliated with the Museo Reina Sofía.
Checked on 15 October 2026 from the sources linked above. Museums change their guides and rules; confirm on the official Reina Sofía website before you go.
Checked on 15 October 2026 from the sources linked above. Museums change their guides and rules; confirm on the official Reina Sofía website before you go.
Swipe for the works and stories worth knowing before you go.
Infrared scans by the museum's restoration team show Picasso changing his mind on the canvas. The fallen soldier at the bottom was first painted upside down and only turned once the picture was well advanced, and his reworked head hides many eyes. More eyes lie buried under the white paint of the bull's head.
museoreinasofia.es: Rethinking Guernica, gigapixel and multispectral study
During the Civil War this building was Hospital Clínico Número 4, run by the Republic's Ministry of War, and it treated more than 30,000 people hurt in bombings and fighting. According to the museum, Room 205.10 nursed survivors of raids by the Condor Legion, the air force that bombed Gernika. The painting of an air raid hangs where its survivors were cared for.
museoreinasofia.es: Room 205.10, Guernica · museoreinasofia.es: Guernica
On 28 February 1974, at MoMA, Tony Shafrazi sprayed KILL LIES ALL across Guernica in red, a protest, the museum says, at Nixon's pardon of William Calley, the only officer tried over the My Lai massacre. A varnish MoMA had added in 1962 let the paint come off, but macrophotographs still find tiny red traces in the cracks.
museoreinasofia.es: Rethinking Guernica, Tony Shafrazi · museoreinasofia.es: Rethinking Guernica, gigapixel and multispectral study
Work on Sabatini's hospital stopped after Charles III died in 1788, with only about a third of it built. After it closed in the late 1960s, a report proposed demolishing all but the courtyard fountains and stairs, and it was sold to a workers' mutual fund for its headquarters. The sale was cancelled, and a 1977 Royal Decree protected the building.
museoreinasofia.es: From Hospital to Museum · museoreinasofia.es: The Construction of the Hospital General
Ángeles Santos was 17 when this three-metre canvas dazzled Madrid's 1929 Autumn Salon; the writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna called it a revelation. Painting in Valladolid, she had never seen Europe's avant-garde first-hand, and met Miró and German New Objectivity through the illustrations in a book by Franz Roh. Find it in Room 205.06.
museoreinasofia.es: Un mundo (A World) · museoreinasofia.es: Room 205.06
Picasso left Guernica at MoMA in New York for safekeeping and in 1958 extended the loan indefinitely. When Franco's regime asked for it in 1968 for a planned Spanish museum of contemporary art, he said no, and in 1970 repeated that it belonged to the Spanish people once their freedoms returned. It reached Spain in 1981.
museoreinasofia.es: Rethinking Guernica, Guernica according to Picasso · museoreinasofia.es: Guernica
This bronze has a twin: the other of its two casts stands on Picasso's grave at Vauvenargues. In 1937 the figure was cast in concrete, alongside three of his large heads, and placed outside Spain's pavilion at the Paris fair, the pavilion Guernica was made for. A 1987 model of that lost building is in the same room, 205.09.
museoreinasofia.es: La femme au vase (Woman with Vase) · museoreinasofia.es: Model of the Spanish Pavilion, Paris 1937
The first stretcher, replaced in 1964, had no wedges, so the huge canvas was pulled tight with clamps that tore and holed its edges, and repeated rolling for travel cracked the paint. At MoMA in 1957, flaking paint was fixed with molten wax and resin heated in from the back. It soaked the whole canvas, can't be undone and glows under UV light.
museoreinasofia.es: Rethinking Guernica, gigapixel and multispectral study · museoreinasofia.es: Rethinking Guernica, restoration report
Jean Nouvel won the 1999 competition for the extension against eleven other firms, among them Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando and Dominique Perrault. Stand in the triangular courtyard and look up: his red lacquered-aluminium roof lines up with the old hospital but stops just short of touching its cornice.
museoreinasofia.es: Jean Nouvel's Intervention · museoreinasofia.es: History
Picasso painted this woman in Madrid in 1901, borrowing the composition from Velázquez's portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria. It went unnoticed at that year's national fine arts exhibition, he left for his first solo show in Paris before it closed, and the canvas was forgotten for decades. It hangs in Room 201.02.
Tales of Museums reads the label in front of you aloud in your language, for any label you can photograph. The museum asks you to keep your phone on silent and speak quietly, so bring headphones. Its Wi-Fi covers Floors 1 to 3 of the Sabatini Building, so bring mobile data for Floor 4.
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The museum's audio guide (€6) covers both collection floors in Spanish, English and Italian. German, French, Chinese and Portuguese cover only the Floor 2 collection, which includes Guernica. It is not offered in Japanese, Korean, Russian, Hebrew or Hungarian. The museum also runs free guided tours; on 21 October 2026 its tours page listed Rethinking Guernica in English, with sign-up at the meeting point from 30 minutes before the start. museoreinasofia.es: audioguides and radioguides · museoreinasofia.es: guided tours
Yes. The museum lifted its long-standing ban on photographing Guernica on 1 September 2023. The museum-wide rule applies: photos without flash, tripods, selfie sticks or any other camera stand, unless a sign says otherwise. museoreinasofia.es: individual visits · Hyperallergic, 11 September 2023
General admission is €12, sold online or at the ticket offices, and every ticket from 10 am until the free hours has a time slot. Entry is free on Mondays and Wednesday to Saturday from 7 to 9 pm, and on Sundays from 12.30 to 2.30 pm, but you still need a ticket, which you can book online at no cost. The museum is closed on Tuesdays. It is busiest from 10 am to midday and when free entry starts at 7 pm; 2 to 6 pm is quieter. museoreinasofia.es: opening times and prices · museoreinasofia.es: individual visits
Guernica hangs in Room 205.10, in the Floor 2 collection of the Sabatini Building, alongside Picasso's sketches for it and Dora Maar's photographs of the painting in progress. The museum recommends about two hours for a visit and suggests coming in through the Nouvel Building entrance. The collection is being rehung until 2028, so some works are moving to the upper floors. museoreinasofia.es: Room 205.10, Guernica · museoreinasofia.es: collections · museoreinasofia.es: individual visits
Yes. The museum asks visitors to speak quietly, keep phones on silent and take calls outside the galleries, and it sells its own audio guide for your phone. Bring headphones so you don't disturb others; Wi-Fi covers Floors 1 to 3 of the Sabatini Building. museoreinasofia.es: individual visits · museoreinasofia.es: audioguides and radioguides
The museum is busiest from 10 am to 12 pm and when free entry starts at 7 pm; for a quieter visit it suggests 2 to 6 pm. It is closed every Tuesday and open other days from 10 am to 9 pm, until 2.30 pm on Sundays. Your ticket lets you leave and come back in on the same day. museoreinasofia.es: opening times · museoreinasofia.es: main site
Take Metro line 1 to Estación del Arte or line 3 to Lavapiés; Atocha train station is about five minutes' walk away. The main entrance is the Sabatini Building on Ronda de Atocha, at the corner of Plaza del Emperador Carlos V, and the Nouvel Building entrance is covered from sun and rain. museoreinasofia.es: main site, getting here
Yes, almost all public areas have wheelchair access, with lifts in both buildings and accessible toilets on several floors; only the Vaults Room is not accessible. Wheelchairs are lent at the Sabatini and Nouvel information points, and you can book help in advance at accesibilidad@museoreinasofia.es. Visitors with a disability of 33% or more, and an essential companion, enter free. museoreinasofia.es: accessible visits
Yes. Strollers are allowed, the museum lends two pushchairs, and there are baby-changing areas in both buildings. Under-18s enter free with a ticket from the ticket office, and children under 14 must stay with an adult. Food and drink aren't allowed in the galleries, but the NUBEL café-restaurant in the Nouvel Building serves meals. museoreinasofia.es: family visits · museoreinasofia.es: individual visits · museoreinasofia.es: visita individual (Spanish)
Tales of Museums is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Museo Reina Sofía. Translations, narration and the extra facts use AI and can contain mistakes, so for anything important, check the museum's official information and the linked sources. Please follow the museum's photography rules.