Convent of Las Descalzas Reales

Convent of Las Descalzas Reales tickets: which one to buy

This is one of the more unusual visits in Madrid and it has to be planned. The convent is still enclosed, with a community of nuns living in part of it, so the historic rooms are shown only on guided tours at fixed times, in groups of limited size, and photography is forbidden throughout. Tickets are sold by the national heritage body at the door and online, and the online route is safer because slots sell out, particularly for the English tour, which runs less often than the Spanish one.

A combined ticket with the royal palace and the other royal convent nearby is good value if you intend to see more than one. The building stands on a square two minutes from the main shopping street, which makes it easy to reach and easy to miss, since the outside is deliberately plain. Bags larger than a small rucksack must be left at the entrance and there is no charge for it.

Visiting Convent of Las Descalzas Reales: what to see

Juana of Austria, daughter of the emperor Charles V and regent of Spain in her brother's absence, founded the convent in 1559 in the palace where she had been born, and it became the retreat of choice for widowed and unmarried women of the royal family and the high nobility. Each arrived with a dowry, and those dowries stayed.

The result is an enclosed convent holding one of the densest collections of art in Spain: Flemish tapestries woven to cartoons by Rubens, paintings by Titian, Brueghel, Zurbaran and Rubens himself, gilded reliquaries by the hundred in a room lined floor to ceiling with them, and a grand staircase frescoed with an illusionistic royal family watching from a balcony. The chapels along the upper cloister were each decorated by a different noble family. Very little of it has ever left the building. The tapestry room alone holds ten large pieces and is shown near the end of the tour.

Convent of Las Descalzas Reales opening hours and the best time to go

Tours run through the day with a long closure in the afternoon and the convent shuts on Mondays; opening is shorter on Sundays. Book ahead in spring and autumn, when Madrid is busiest. Summer is very hot and this is an excellent indoor hour. The nuns still sing the office and the church is used for services, which occasionally displaces a tour.

The surrounding streets hold some of the oldest shops in the city and the convent square is a quiet corner in a very loud district. The royal palace is ten minutes west and the Prado fifteen minutes east, so this fits into a museum day without difficulty. The tour takes about an hour and there is no way to see the rooms without it. Free admission is offered to European Union citizens for the last hours of certain afternoons.