Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is Spain's national museum of 20th-century and contemporary art, and the home of Pablo Picasso's Guernica. It occupies the former General Hospital of Madrid, an 18th-century neoclassical building commissioned by Charles III and now known as the Sabatini Building. It opened as an art centre in 1986, became a national museum in 1988 and opened to the public in its current form in September 1992. In 2005 a large extension by the French architect Jean Nouvel was added, with a red-roofed courtyard that links new galleries, a library and an auditorium.

Guernica is the reason most visitors come. Picasso painted it in 1937 for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the Paris International Exposition, and after decades in New York it returned to Spain in 1981, moving to the Reina Sofía in 1992. The room around it includes studies and related works that help explain how the painting developed. Beyond Picasso, the collection is particularly strong on Juan Gris, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, and it also covers Surrealism, Cubism and postwar art, with works by Magritte, Braque, Francis Bacon, Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida.

The collection is arranged by period across the floors of the Sabatini Building, with the glass lifts on the outside of the facade giving good views over the Atocha area. Temporary exhibitions are often excellent and fill the Nouvel Building. A visit of two to three hours is enough for Guernica and the main collection. The museum suits anyone with an interest in modern art, and teenagers who have studied the Civil War often find Guernica moving.

The museum is closed on Tuesdays. On other days it opens at 10:00 and closes at 21:00, except Sundays when it closes at 14:30. Free entry is offered on weekday evenings and on Sunday late mornings, but you still need a free ticket, which can be booked online, and last entry is 30 minutes before closing. The museum also runs two free exhibition spaces in the Retiro park, the Palacio de Velázquez and the Palacio de Cristal, though the latter is temporarily closed for works.

The main entrance is on Calle de Santa Isabel, with a second entrance at the Nouvel Building on Ronda de Atocha. Atocha station, for metro and Cercanías trains, is directly opposite, and the Prado is about ten minutes' walk north along the Paseo del Prado.