National Archaeological Museum, Madrid


The National Archaeological Museum is a museum in Madrid, Spain. It is located on Serrano Street beside the Plaza de Colón, sharing its building with the National Library.
The museum was founded in 1867 by a Royal Decree of Isabella II as a depository for numismatic, archaeological, ethnographical and decorative art collections of the Spanish monarchs.
The museum was originally located in the Embajadores district of Madrid. In 1895, it moved to a building designed specifically to house it, a neoclassical design by architect Francisco Jareño, built from 1866 to 1892. In 1968, renovation and extension works considerably increased its area. The museum closed for renovation in 2008 and reopened in April 2014. The remodelled museum concentrates on its core archaeological role, rather than decorative arts.
Its collection is based on pieces from the Iberian Peninsula, from Prehistory to Early-Modern Age. However, it also has different collections coming from outside of Spain, especially from Ancient Greece, both from the metropolitan and, above all, from Magna Graecia, and, to a lesser extent, from Ancient Egypt, in addition to "a small number of pieces" from Near East.

Artefacts

In the forecourt is a replica of the Cave of Altamira. It was made in the 1960s using photogrammetry and is related to an exhibit at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
Visitors enter the building at basement level, and pass to the prehistory section.
;Prehistoric and Iberian
;Roman and Visigothic
;Medieval
;Al-Andalus