Castles · Tour

Royal Palace Madrid Guided: the Portrait Gallery and the Armouries

The official home of the Spanish royal family runs to 135,000 square metres, and the number is not there to impress. It is the reason a guide is worth having: a building this size has no natural route through it, and without someone leading you end up walking the same corridor twice and missing a wing. The guided route takes the marble staircases, the throne room, the portrait gallery and the armouries. The portrait gallery is where the dynasty explains itself. Successive kings and queens hung in sequence, painted by court artists who had to make each sitter look like a ruler and like their father at the same time, and the Habsburg jaw becomes impossible to unsee about four canvases in. The armouries hold the working weapons and armour of the crown, and they are the part of the palace that was never decorative. What the guide supplies is the context that turns a very large house into a legible one. Cancellation is free up to the start of the booked slot.