Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

The Reina Sofia is Madrid's national museum of 20th and 21st century art, opening in 1992 in a converted 18th-century hospital later extended by a glass and steel wing from Jean Nouvel. It is the third corner of the Paseo del Arte with the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. The centrepiece is Picasso's Guernica, painted for the 1937 Paris World Fair and returned to Spain only after Franco's death in 1981; it now hangs in its own gallery alongside preparatory drawings. Major holdings of Dali, Miro, Juan Gris and the Generacion del 27 fill the upper floors. Visitors usually ride the exterior glass lifts to the top and descend; entry is free on Mondays and during the last two hours on most weekday evenings, which explains the late-afternoon queues.