The story
The Marquis of Cerralbo wanted his Madrid house kept as he left it, and it largely has been. Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, the 17th Marquis, was a politician, a tireless collector and one of the pioneers of Spanish archaeology, who paid for and led excavations himself. At the end of the 19th century he built this palace near what is now Plaza de España, to live in and to show what he had gathered. When he died in 1922 he left the collections, part of the building and an income to keep them to the Spanish state, and the museum opened in 1944.
A visitor walks through a nobleman's home filled the way he arranged it, more than 50,000 objects in all, from paintings and drawings to furniture, archaeological finds and a room of armour from the 15th to the 17th centuries. The high point of the house is the ballroom, all mirrors and gilding, with a crystal chandelier and a painted ceiling, where the marquis gave his parties.
The paintings hang among the furniture of the family rooms. The prize is El Greco's Saint Francis in Ecstasy. Nearby are an Immaculate Conception by Zurbarán, a portrait by Tintoretto and work by Van Dyck.
