Spain’s council of ministers has granted $42 million to Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado to complete its long awaited expansion which was delayed by six years due to political and financial tensions reverberating throughout the country and Covid-19.
The country will provide the money over three year span allowing the institution to renovate the neighboring Hall of Realms, which it purchased in 2012. The museum’s expansion project is expected to finish by 2024.
The renovation will be handled jointly by British architects Foster and Partners and Spanish firm Rubio Arquitectura. The plan is to connect the Prado and the Hall of Realms, a palace dating to the seventeenth century that was once home to the Royal Collection’s large-scale paintings with a pathway.
The Hall of Realms and its many murals and friezes will also be restored, and it is rumored that paintings—including some by Diego Velázquez—that migrated from the palace to the nineteenth-century building housing the Prado may make their way back to the older structure’s grand confines. Additionally, the Hall of Realms is to receive a large atrium through which visitors can enter, as well as a third floor and a terrace. The expansion is expected to give the Prado an extra 27,000 square feet of exhibition space.
The funding was made available through a “legal shortcut” and is considered to be apart from the ministry of culture’s regular budget. The money will be disbursed annually, in three separate tranches, with the museum receiving $9.6 million in 2022, $24.1 million in 2023, and $8.4 million in 2024.
