Reina Sofía Museum

The Reina Sofía fills Madrid's former General Hospital, an 18th-century building by Francesco Sabatini, with glass lift towers added to its front when it was converted into an art centre. Jean Nouvel's extension of 2005, with a vast red roof over an open courtyard, holds exhibition halls, a library and auditoriums.

Picasso's Guernica is why most people come. He painted it in 1937 for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the Paris World's Fair; it reached Spain only in 1981 and has hung here since 1992, with his studies and Dora Maar's photographs of its making nearby. Around it, the collection runs from the late 19th century to today, with Dalí, Miró, Juan Gris and the art of the Civil War years.