El Escorial reopens its painting and architecture museums after nearly a decade: around 100 masterpieces, 21 on display for the first time

The Museums of Painting and Architecture of the Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial reopen to the public on Friday, October 2, 2026, after being closed for nearly a decade, as El País reports. The reopening was announced on Thursday by the president of Patrimonio Nacional, Ana de la Cueva, at a press conference at the monastery. The two museums were first opened in 1963, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the laying of the monastery’s first stone, and had been closed since around 2016.

The Museum of Painting presents around 100 works by Italian, Flemish and Spanish masters — Tiziano, Tintoretto, Cambiaso, Veronés, Vaccaro, Van der Weyden, Giordano, Ribera, Madrazo, Carvajal, Coxcie — collected in the collections of Philip II, Philip IV, Charles II, Charles IV and Isabella II. Twenty-one of these works are on permanent display for the first time: some had spent decades in storage, in palace offices or in Madrid, while around a third of all the works were specially restored for this reopening.

The new exhibition layout abandons the previous museum’s division by artist: the works are now grouped by the collecting kings, to show how each king used art to project the power of the crown, The Times writes.

Among the emblematic works are Michiel Coxcie’s diptych “Allegory of Salvation”, known as the “Flemish Raphael”, Rogier van der Weyden’s “Calvary” and Tiziano’s “Saint Margaret of Antioch”. The investment for the reopening amounts to 3.1 million euros, covered mainly by European NextGenerationEU funds.

Admission to the two museums will be free until December 31, 2026; from January 2027 the visit is included in the monastery’s general ticket, while there will also be a separate ticket for these two museums only.