Voces del Prado

My Childhood Around the Museum

Pilar Silva Maroto, Head of the Department of Conservation of Flemish Painting and the Northern Schools up to 1700, 1997-2017

I was born in this neighbourhood; I did my First Communion and Confirmation at Los Jerónimos, and I can still remember seeing the firemen in Murillo Entrance. I began skating at the Goya Entrance when it was closed; I skated down the slope sitting down, as if I were in the Gredos mountains. All of that was when I was just a girl. When I was older, I loved looking at the works of art, and especially the Flemish Primitives and the Velázquez paintings. The memory I have of seeing Las Meninas with their mirror is one that I will never forget, and I loved going to see that painting.