The Museo Cerralbo in Madrid is a house museum founded on the collections of Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, Marquis of Cerralbo, who died in 1922. The 19th-century building is in Italian taste. It is richly decorated with baroque furniture, wall paintings and expensive chandeliers, and it largely retains its original aesthetics. The Marquis opened the house as a private gallery in 1893.
The Spanish State accepted the collection in 1924, and the building became a formal museum in 1944. It was protected as a historical-artistic monument in 1962.
The collection originally had more than 24,900 pieces. It includes archaeology, Chinese and Japanese art, and paintings by El Greco, Zurbarán, Tintoretto, Alonso Cano and Van Dyck. It also holds porcelain, tapestries, carpets, jewelry and French and English clocks.
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