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<\/p>\nIf the self-portrait that Diego Vel\u00e1zquez painted in Las Meninas could see, he would gaze out on crowds jostling in front of his masterpiece in the Prado.<\/p>\n
The head of Madrid\u2019s blockbuster museum once feared that the institution attracted insufficient visitors, owing to an economic crisis and then the pandemic. Now Miguel Falomir is worried that it is in danger of becoming \u201cover-saturated\u201d and a victim of its own success.<\/p>\n
Falomir said the museum did not want to chase ever-higher attendance figures after recording more than 3.5 million visitors for the first time in its history last year. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Las Meninas by Diego Vel\u00e1zquez<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Prado does not need a single visitor more. We are comfortable with 3.5 million,\u201d he said, while presenting the museum\u2019s programme for 2026. \u201cA museum can collapse due to success, like the Louvre, with some rooms becoming over-saturated. The important thing is not to collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the Louvre<\/a> attracts significantly more visitors \u2014 about 8.7 million in 2024, far above its original design capacity \u2014 Falomir noted the Prado is eight to ten times smaller than the French institution, meaning it receives far more visitors per square metre. <\/p>\n That pressure is most visible in front of Vel\u00e1zquez\u2019s Las Meninas, one of the most celebrated and analysed works in western art, where dense clusters of visitors gather for much of the day.<\/p>\n To address the broader issue of crowding, the Prado has launched what it calls a \u201chost plan\u201d, designed to preserve \u2014 and where possible improve \u2014 the quality of visits rather than increase visitor numbers. \u201cIt can\u2019t be like taking the tube at rush hour,\u201d Falomir said. \u201cYou can\u2019t judge a museum by the number of visitors. The quality of the visit is more important than the quantity.\u201d<\/p>\n In the past Falomir has expressed concern about the congestion around Las Meninas and other popular works such as Francisco Goya\u2019s \u201cMajas\u201d paintings and Hieronymus Bosch\u2019s The Garden of Earthly Delights. A university study suggested that Bosch\u2019s triptych attracted the longest average viewing times in the Prado, as visitors spend more than four minutes on average looking at its depictions of Eden, worldly pleasures and hell, contributing to bottlenecks in that room.<\/p>\n Queen Letizia visits the exhibition of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch during at El Prado Museum in May, 2016<\/p>\n JJ GUILLEN\/ZUMA PRESS WIRE<\/p>\n The Garden of Earthly Delights<\/p>\n UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE\/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n The plan focuses on managing how people move through the museum rather than restricting access outright. <\/p>\n Falomir said that entrances would be optimised, group sizes reduced and existing rules \u2014 including the ban on taking photographs inside the galleries \u2014 more strictly enforced to prevent congestion and distractions in the exhibition spaces.<\/p>\n Huge crowds jostle to see Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Paris<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Another objective is to rebalance the profile of the museum\u2019s audience<\/a> as local fears grow about the impact of Madrid\u2019s booming tourism industry. According to figures presented, about 65-75 per cent of the museum\u2019s visitors last year were foreigners. Falomir said the Prado would like to see more Spanish visitors. \u201cA museum should not become detached from its domestic public,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The Prado\u2019s stance places it at the centre of a broader debate among major museums<\/a> about overtourism and sustainability. <\/p>\n The Louvre\u2019s leadership, while reeling from last year\u2019s embarrassing theft of royal crown jewels<\/a>, has warned that its historic building and facilities, designed for far fewer annual visitors, are strained under current crowds. <\/p>\n Its director, Laurence des Cars, this month described visits as a \u201cphysical ordeal\u201d. He is pursuing renovation and visitor-management measures partly aimed at easing pressure around its most popular painting, the Mona Lisa<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the self-portrait that Diego Vel\u00e1zquez painted in Las Meninas could see, he would gaze out on crowds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-371662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Queen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/412f455b-61b0-4dea-8532-c1951a55d19d.jpg\")
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