This very personal museum close to the Debod temple was once owned by the 17th Marquis of Cerralbo, Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa. Housed in an Italian-style 19th-century mansion, it provides a unique visiting experience, as its contents are laid out in exactly the same order as when he was living there. The Marquis was a great traveler as well as an erudite man of letters, and the museum is filled with collections (bequeathed to the state on his death in 1922) gathered during his colorful life. Forty years later it was declared a national monument. Among its multitude of artistic treasures and eclectic knick-knacks (estimated at around 50,000) are paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, Zurbarán, and El Greco (including his classic Ecstasy of St. Francis of Assisi), sculptures, 18th-century English watches, Venetian lamps, Saxon porcelain, and European and Japanese armor. The garden, planned in a classical-romantic style, has a small central pond and surrounding busts of Roman emperors.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Madrid, 3rd Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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