The project for the extension of the Prado Museum must be understood as a new chapter of its already long life. A chapter that considers the impact on the Museum of the occupation of a new site containing the Jerónimos Cloister, the perimeter surrounding it and the area comprised between the back of the Museum and Ruiz de Alarcón street. The project that garnered the first prize claimed the opening of the now closed Puerta de Velázquez on the facade onto the Paseo del Prado, an entrance that favored and guided transit from the aforementioned facade to the cloister. In this way, the Prado Museum leads, in this new chapter of its existence, to a transversal axis that guides and transports visitors from the Paseo del Prado portico to the cloister.

                                                                                                                          Extensions

Resting on the transversal axis that stems from the portico and ends at the Cloister are the areas for complementary activities: the reception spaces for all the services related to temporary exhibitions, the drawings and artwork restoration workshops, and so on. The apse hall on ground floor serves as intersection of both axes and is the piece that structures the overlapping of activities between the original Prado Museum and the extension. Stuccoed in Pompeian red and adorned with the muses from Villa Adriana, this apse hall is conceived as an introduction to the Museum itinerary. Glazed galleries, which encircle an open courtyard around the apse, then lead to a trapezoidal space. This is where the reception hall – with ticket purchase, checkrooms, restrooms, cloakrooms, information, cafeteria, and store – is located. The auditorium and two galleries for temporary exhibitions are also accessed from this space. While one of these galleries gathers the four columns that support the slabs, in the other they are distanced from one another, making room for a large lantern that lets the light coming in through the cloister roof pass through.

The cloister is thought of as a lamp that illuminates the whole new structure; as a work of art that joins the Museum collections; as an architectural element that justifies everything that is built around it. The oblique space, so important in establishing the connection between the Museum and the new addition, appears outside as an elevated terrace carpeted with a garden. And, in contrast, as if they were another fragment of nature, the doors designed by Cristina Iglesias are built into the concise and smooth facade of pressed brick crowned by a marble slab.

Entrance hall +635,30 

Cloister floor +646,50 

Documentation floor +649,98 

Restoration floor +654,16 

Entrance floor +643,23