Casón del Buen Retiro

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The Casón del Buen Retiro is one of the two buildings that survived the destruction of the Buen Retiro Palace, from which its name was taken. Currently, it is part of the Prado Museum.

It was built in 1637 as part of a project developed by Alonso Carbonell. It still maintains the windowed barrel vault and the Alegoría del Toisón de Oro fresco painting, done by Lucas Jordán in 1962. The main west façade was designed by Velázquez Bosco. Jaime Torruell performed the latest restoration.

For many decades, the building housed 19th Century painting collections belonging to the Prado Museum, comprising about 3,000 paintings. Moreover, it exhibited Picasso’s “Guernica” since the arrival of the painting from the United States of America. In 1992, Picasso’s work was moved to the Reina Sofía Museum, and the Casón was closed and underwent a major restoration. Today, newly-restored it houses the library of the Prado Museum, one of the best and most unknown libraries of art in Madrid. It is specialized in painting and sculpture from the Middle Ages until the 19th century and has also important funds relating to drawings, prints, classical sculpture and decorative arts. It houses some 70,000 titles of monographs and 1000 journal titles, as well as funding of audiovisual materials and specialized electronic resources.