Lazaro Galdiano Museum Tickets

Most of what is on show here belonged to one man, and it is still in his house. José Lázaro Galdiano was a financier who spent a lifetime buying art, and his mansion on Calle Serrano now holds the result: Goya's witches and sabbath scenes, a Bosch, and floor after floor of decorative art in cases. Admission is €8, one of the lowest paid entries in the city, and in the last hour of weekday afternoons it costs nothing at all. It sits north of the Art Walk, far enough out that a metro ride is part of the plan.

What will you see inside the Lázaro Galdiano?

The museum is the private collection of the financier José Lázaro Galdiano, shown in his own mansion on Calle Serrano. Goya is the headline, with the witches and sabbath paintings, and there is a Bosch alongside them. Around the paintings sits a deep run of decorative art across several floors.

The Goya group is the reason most people come. These are not the official canvases or the court portraits that fill the Prado, but the darker, stranger private pictures, witches and night scenes painted for people who wanted them on their own walls. Seeing them in a house rather than a national gallery changes the temperature of the thing.

The decorative art is the part visitors underestimate. Lázaro Galdiano bought across categories rather than specialising, so the cases run through metalwork, ivories, textiles and objects that would be a headline exhibit somewhere smaller. The rooms themselves are part of the collection: painted ceilings, panelling and the proportions of a private residence rather than a purpose-built gallery.

The temporary programme is small and often photographic. In 2026 the museum took part in PHotoESPAÑA with Bunny by Talia Chetrit and with Isabel Matoses: La imagen recuperada, and put sculpture by Antón Casamor outdoors under the title luz y escultura. The garden is used as exhibition space in summer, which is worth knowing before you decide how long to give the visit.

How do Lázaro Galdiano tickets work, and when is it free?

Adult admission is €8, among the lowest paid entries in the city, and the collection is free in the last hour of the day from Tuesday to Friday, between 14:00 and 15:00. The museum closes on Mondays, and on 15 August and 24, 25 and 31 December. Booking online mainly buys you a fixed date.

Be clear about what that free hour is. It is one hour, at the end of the day, on four weekdays, and it ends when the museum does. That is enough for the Goya rooms and a fast look at one floor of decorative art, and not enough for the house as a whole. On a €8 ticket, the calculation is different from the one at a €15 national museum: paying is not the expensive option here.

What booking ahead gives you is certainty about the date rather than a queue-skip, since this is not a museum that turns people away at the door on a normal Tuesday. If it is going into a fixed itinerary, or you are combining it with something else in the same afternoon, it is worth taking a moment to check availability using the booking panel above.

Current hours, the temporary programme and any change to the free window sit on the museum's own site, and the city's tourism office lists it too. Both are worth a look if your visit falls near a public holiday.

Is it worth going once you have done the big three?

Yes, if you would rather see art in a private house than a national gallery, and if €8 against €15 matters. The Prado and its two neighbours are state collections in purpose-built rooms. This is one man's taste, left roughly where he kept it, and it belongs to a group of small Madrid museums that most itineraries skip.

Those small museums are the city's real value. Museo Cerralbo is a marquis's palace with its original decor and an El Greco, and it recorded 165,167 visitors in a recent year, a fraction of what the Prado handles in a month. The San Fernando Academy holds two Goya self-portraits, and the Archaeological Museum keeps the Dama de Elche.

Priced side by side, the pattern is obvious: most of them cost less than a museum café sandwich, and each has a free window somewhere in the week. The catch is that they close on Mondays, and the free hours land in the middle of the afternoon, so two of them in a day needs a little planning.

How long do you need, and how does a visit flow?

Ninety minutes covers the house comfortably: the Goya rooms, the main painting galleries and a proper look at two floors of decorative art. Two hours suits anyone who reads labels or wants the garden as well. In the free hour from 14:00 you have time for the paintings and very little else.

The building is arranged as a residence, which means smaller rooms, more doorways and a route that rewards going in order rather than hunting for highlights. Start with the paintings while you are fresh, then work outwards into the decorative arts, which are easier to browse than to study. Anyone short on time should treat the Goyas as the visit and the rest as a bonus.

The garden is the piece people forget. It is part of the property rather than a public park, it has been used for outdoor sculpture during the summer programme, and on a hot afternoon it is the natural place to stop before heading back towards the centre.

Know before you go: hours, closed days and getting there

The museum sits on Calle Serrano, north of the Art Walk in the Salamanca and Chamberí part of the city, which puts it beyond comfortable walking distance from Sol or the Paseo del Prado. It closes on Mondays, and free entry runs in the last hour of the day from Tuesday to Friday, 14:00 to 15:00.

Plan a metro leg into the trip. Unlike the big three, which are walkable from the centre, this one and the other outlying museums need a ride: a single Zone A ticket runs €1.50 to €2.00 and a ten-trip ticket €7.30, with multi-day tourist passes from €10.30 for one day up to €43.20 for seven.

Check the day before you go rather than the week before. Beyond the Monday closure the museum shuts on 15 August and on 24, 25 and 31 December, and the daily hours are published on its own site. The city's official visitor pages, at esmadrid.com, carry the same details alongside the free-window listings for the rest of the city.

Which other museums pair well with it?

Pair it with the other small collections rather than with a national museum. Museo Cerralbo is the closest match in spirit, another intact aristocratic house, and the San Fernando Academy adds two more Goyas for €10. If the day is already going to the Paseo del Prado, treat this as the following morning instead.

The natural double-bill is this museum and Museo Cerralbo: two private houses, two collectors, and between them a picture of what wealthy Madrid actually lived with. Cerralbo costs €3 and is free on Thursday evenings and Sundays, so the pair can be done for the price of one national-museum ticket.

For a Goya thread across the city, add the San Fernando Academy on Calle de Alcalá, which holds two self-portraits and 213 original copper plates, and finish at the Prado, where the Black Paintings hang. That sequence runs from private pictures to public masterpieces, and it is a better day than three big galleries in a row.

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