There are a couple of other museums well worth visiting near El Prado. El Prado can get very busy because it's on everybody's list of things to visit. I've been there on a quiet day at some point and it's very enjoyable. But when you have to queue up for 45 minutes just to get in, it's probably a lot less nice. Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has a pretty amazing collection and is right across the street. And down the street is the Reina Sofia, which has a nice modern art collection (think lots of Miro, Picasso, Dali, etc.).
If you have time and a car, driving around Spain is very enjoyable. I've seen most of it's larger and smaller cities over the years.
+1. But the train, specially being in Madrid, is a very good alternative to the car to travel around Spain.
Also went West and caught a boat to Tangiers in Morocco for a day trip. It was my first time experiencing culture shock. Tangiers was so different from either America or Europe. I made friends with two Danish soldiers and the three of us explored the Casbah together. It was also the first (and last!) time that I ate a sheep's eyeball! Little kids everywhere were begging for money. I understood perfectly why they spoke to me in English. But when they found out my friends were from Denmark they switched to speaking perfect Danish! These kids knew a smattering of a dozen languages or more.
Sadly, Barcelona is a bit too hyped and gentrified. It suffers from the same kind of issues SF has.
Both are great in terms of access to an inexpensive talent pool.
We do have a river, but if it doesn't seem much to you, take the train south and in half an hour you reach Aranjuez:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aranjuez
There you have the Tagus river and gorgeous gardens.
Distances in Spain are different than in US. Some cities are connected from here in an interval of less than two hours (one-way) by fast train AVE so reserving one day to explore another city as a bonus is doable with some extra work. This comprises Valencia, Salamanca, Burgos or Cordoba. You could basically go from one point to the other coin of Iberia in a day by train if you don't mind to burn a day looking at the landscape. Or sleep in the train and wake up in a different coastal city in a different Sea. Is just a question of money and planning.
In the same way if you go to Barcelona I would strongly advise to explore near destinations in Pyrenees or the South of France also.
Other than that, we like the city, and especially our neighbourhood.
Nobody takes siestas in Spain but the elderly, children and people without A/C in hot zones in summer, and I suppose in some rural towns as well.
The trouble with Barcelona these days is the tourists have ruined it. Both the tourists themselves, and the city itself pandering to the tourists.
I avoid the place like the plague these days.
I had almost no idea about Spain before I moved to Europe and soon realised that it is a friendly place with amazing reasonably priced food and some of the most amazing artwork. Every new city has these qualities and adds its own stories and beautiful architecture.
Also Spain is to gin and tonic what New York is to pizza and Australia/New Zealand are to coffee: they did not invent it, but they certainly perfected it. a giant fish bowl of gin mare and good tonic water filled with ice and maybe some rosemary for scent.
James and Yoly really enjoy living here in Madrid, and they explain the good and the bad of our culture and customs. No bullsh*t, warts and all.
I preferred it over Barcelona, too.
Avoid July and August, horrible heat and most people have left the city
Most museums are only able to show a few dozen or hundred works in their galleries at a time, but store thousands of works in their collection. In an effort to accommodate this reality, many museums publish a freely available database of their collection. There isn't really a standard practice for creating, maintaining, and publishing these databases, so it really depends on each museum's collections team to do that work; and it will always be a relatively low priority. Digital exhibitions could radically change that.
> The entire deposit collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (more than 151,000 objects housed together, arranged in fourteen storage compartments with five different climates) is stored here and is publicly accessible, on a total floor area of 15,541 m2.
That's incredible.
Things like matterport seem too proprietary. This particular one seems to be a far higher quality as well.
I’m curious what rig they used.
Open data from museums are the only way I can see it being archived for the long term benefit of society.
PS: why the downvotes? It's literally written at the end but there's no download link anywhere...
> Funded with the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRPP), Spain’s Next Generation EU financing and according to the initiatives within the component C.24.I3 Digitization and valorization of major cultural services, included in Prado Training as an Inclusive experience of visit.
That’s not to say they couldn’t do more - but it’s a very active area in many museums.
[1] https://applemuseum360.com
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR
[3] https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/int/virtualtour3d-f...
- The zooming-on-painting part is good though.
The point : I am building a much more immersive technology . Here is an small example. https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01
If you like this visit, and if you know a museum who needs my immersive technology, please send me a mail, I would be glad : thierry.milard@gmail.com
Sorolla is the master of light. His paintings are stunning[2]
There are several virtual tours available online [3]
[1] https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/inicio.html [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Cosiendo... [3] https://www.cultura.gob.es/msorolla/exposicion/visita-virtua...
Separately, you can also zoom in to many artworks with extreme detail (e.g. 1000+ dpi).
