Prado Museum, Spanish Museo del Prado, art museum in Madrid, housing the world’s richest and most comprehensive collection of Spanish painting, as well as masterpieces of other schools of European painting, especially Italian and Flemish art.

The Prado’s building had its start in 1785 when Charles III commissioned the architect Juan de Villanueva to design a natural science museum.

The construction of the Neoclassical-style building was interrupted during the Napoleonic Wars, but it was completed under Ferdinand VII in 1819 and was opened to the public as the Royal Museum of Painting. In 1868 it became the National Museum of the Prado after the exile of Isabella II, who had enlarged the collection with paintings from the royal palaces and the Escorial.

The Prado’s holdings originally consisted of the art collected by the Habsburg and Bourbon monarchs of Spain.

In 1981 Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937) was added to the Prado’s collection.