Centro de Arte Reina Sofia Travel Guide

It is fortunate that the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Mon & Wed-Sat 10am-9pm, Sun 10am-2.30pm; €3, free on Sat after 2.30pm and Sun; museoreinasofia.mcu.es ; Métro: Atocha), facing Atocha station at the end of Paseo del Prado, keeps slightly different opening hours and days to its neighbours. For this leading exhibition space and permanent gallery of modern Spanish art - its centrepiece is Picasso's greatest picture, Guernica - is another essential stop on the Madrid art circuit, and one that really mustn't be seen after a Prado-Thyssen overdose.

The museum, a vast former hospital, is a kind of Madrid response to the Pompidou centre in Paris. Transparent lifts shuttle visitors up the outside of the building, whose levels feature a cinema, excellent art book and design shops, a print, music and photographic library, a restaurant, bar and café in the basement and a peaceful inner courtyard garden, as well as the exhibition halls and the permanent collection of twentieth-century art (second and fourth floors). Like the other two great art museums it too has plans to extend - here the French architect Jean Nouvel is supervising a scheme which will add a state-of-the-art extension behind the main building and will increase the floor space by 55 percent