THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA NATIONAL MUSEUM

This neoclassical palace houses the magnificent private collection of the Barons Thyssen-Bornemisza, with paintings from the ^12th to the ^20th century. It complements the Prado for classical painting and the Reina Sofía for modern painting.

If you want to follow a chronological order, start your visit on the second floor. This section is devoted to the Italian and Flemish primitives. Room 1 houses a magnificent ^14th-century work: Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1311), by Duccio. In room 3, we find two jewels of the collection: The Annunciation (c. 1435-1441) by Jan van Eyck and The Virgin with the Dry Tree (c. 1450), by Petrus Christus.

On the second floor, you can admire paintings from the German Renaissance, including Holbein's Portrait of Henry VIII (c. 1534-1536), and ^17th-century Dutch paintings, including La Toilette de Vénus (c. 1629) and Rubens' Venus and Cupid. Rooms 16, 17 and 18 are devoted to ^18th-century Italian art, featuring two fine views of the Grand Canal in Venice: one by Canaletto (1723) and another by Francesco Guardi. Romantic works such as Caspar David Friedrich's Easter Morning are also on display.

Impressionism is present, with paintings by Manet, Monet and Renoir. Van Gogh ( Les Vessenots à Auvers, 1888), Cézanne(Portrait d'un paysan, circa 1900), Gauguin(Mata Mua, circa 1892) and Toulouse-Lautrec(Gaston Bonnefoy, 1891) complete the picture. The German Expressionists are represented by the Die Brücke group.

On the first floor, 8 rooms (from 41 to 48) are devoted to contemporary art. The various avant-garde schools of the ^20th century are highlighted: cubism with Picasso's Man with a Clarinet or Harlequin (1923), a number of paintings by Braque and Juan Gris, surrealism with Dalí, Miró and Magritte, Kandinsky's abstract period and painters such as Chagall, Max Ernst and Klee. The final rooms are devoted to post-war American painting: Mark Rothko's Green on Violet, a treasure trove of Abstract Expressionism, and Pollock's Brown and Silver I. Figurative painting is represented by Hopper, Lucian Freud and Bacon. The tour ends with pop art: Rauchenberg's Express, Lichtenstein's Femme au bain and Wesselmann's Nu nº 1.

Last but not least, the store is well worth a visit, with its à la carte prints of the museum's paintings.