San Fernando Academy Tickets

Goya was elected to this academy in 1780, and it still owns two of his self-portraits. It also owns the copper plates he cut for the Caprichos, the Desastres, the Disparates and the Tauromaquia, all 213 of them, now shown together in a room of their own. The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando stands on Calle de Alcalá, admission is €10, and the permanent collection opens free on early weekday afternoons. The whole place shuts for August.

What will you see inside the San Fernando Academy?

The academy's gallery holds centuries of Spanish painting with an unusual concentration of Goya: two self-portraits, The Burial of the Sardine, and the Gabinete Goya, where the 213 original copper plates for his print series are displayed. Arcimboldo's Spring hangs in the same collection.

The Goya holding is what sets this apart from every other gallery in the city. He was a member here from 1780 and later its director of painting, and the academy kept what passed through its hands. The self-portraits are the intimate end of him, painted for himself and for colleagues rather than for a court, and The Burial of the Sardine is the carnival scene that reads as a rehearsal for everything darker he did later.

The Gabinete Goya is newer and easy to underrate. Those 213 copper plates are the actual objects he engraved, the physical source of the Caprichos and the Desastres de la Guerra, and seeing them as metal rather than as prints on paper changes how the series lands. Few museums anywhere can put a complete set of an artist's plates in one room.

Around the Goyas sits the wider academy collection, several centuries of Spanish painting plus outliers such as Arcimboldo's Spring, the head built from flowers. The temporary programme is modest and scholarly: in 2026 it ran Los Moreno, fotógrafos de arte, from 17 June to 22 November, on two photographers who documented Spanish art.

How does admission work, and when is entry free?

Admission is €10, sold by the academy itself rather than through a booking site. The permanent collection is free from Tuesday to Friday between 13:30 and 15:00, and on a handful of set dates through the year. The academy closes on Mondays and for the whole of August.

The free window is the practical way in for anyone on a budget, and it is not a token half hour: 13:30 to 15:00 is ninety minutes, four days a week, and it covers the permanent collection, which is what almost everyone comes for. The trade is timing. It falls squarely over lunch, and it is the only free slot the academy runs on a normal week.

Paying €10 buys the rest of the day and any temporary exhibition running alongside. Tickets and reservations are handled on the academy's own site, which is also where the current hours and the Sábados de Arte programme of extended Saturday opening are published.

Where can you see Goya in Madrid, and how does this fit?

Three collections carry the serious Goya holdings in the city, and they do not overlap. The Prado has the public masterpieces and the Black Paintings, this academy has the self-portraits and the complete copper plates, and the Lázaro Galdiano has the private witches and sabbath scenes. Together they cost less than most people expect.

If you only do one, the Prado is the obvious answer, because The Third of May 1808 and the Black Paintings are there and nothing else compares for scale. But the academy is the place to understand him as a printmaker, and the Lázaro Galdiano shows the pictures he made for private walls rather than public ones.

Every one of the three has a free window, and they fall at different times of day, which makes a Goya-led afternoon genuinely possible on a small budget. The academy's slot at 13:30 is the earliest of them, so it works as the opening move.

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

An hour to ninety minutes covers it. The academy is a gallery inside a working institution rather than a sprawling national museum, so the Goya rooms, the Gabinete and the Spanish painting galleries fit comfortably into a single unhurried visit, with time left for whatever temporary show is running.

Give the Gabinete Goya more time than its size suggests. The plates repay slow looking, and reading two or three of them properly is better than walking the room. After that, the self-portraits and The Burial of the Sardine make the natural centre of the visit, and the wider Spanish painting galleries fill whatever is left.

Arriving for the free window at 13:30 means ninety minutes exactly, which fits the collection but leaves no slack. Anyone who wants to sit with the plates or take in a temporary exhibition should pay and come earlier in the day.

Know before you go: hours, the August closure and getting there

The academy stands on Calle de Alcalá in central Madrid. It closes on Mondays, and unlike the big national museums it shuts completely for August, so a summer trip needs planning around it. Free entry to the permanent collection runs Tuesday to Friday from 13:30 to 15:00.

The August closure is the detail that catches people out. Most of the city's major museums stay open through the summer; this one does not, and it also closes on 1 and 6 January, 1 and 30 May, 9 November, and from 23 to 25 December plus 31 December. Daily hours shift with the Sábados de Arte programme, so take the times from the academy rather than from a general listing.

Getting there is straightforward from the centre. Calle de Alcalá is one of the main central arteries, and from further out a single Zone A metro ticket runs €1.50 to €2.00, with a ten-trip ticket at €7.30. The city's official visitor site, esmadrid.com, lists the academy alongside the rest of the free-window calendar.

Which museums pair well with the academy?

The academy sits between the shopping streets and the Art Walk, so it pairs easily with a Paseo del Prado museum later the same day. The Prado is the obvious partner for anyone following Goya, and the Lázaro Galdiano completes the thread with his private pictures. The Thyssen-Bornemisza is the lighter afternoon.

The strongest sequence is the academy at opening, then a walk down to the Prado, where the same painter turns up at full public scale. Doing it in that order means you meet the printmaker before the court painter, which is the more interesting way round and not how most itineraries arrange it.

For a gentler pairing, the Thyssen-Bornemisza covers seven centuries in a building small enough to finish in two hours. A separate day suits the Lázaro Galdiano on Calle Serrano, since that one needs a metro ride and its free hour lands at 14:00.

Questions people ask