Voces del Prado

The Casón, the ugly duckling

Pedro Álvarez Moreno, Head of the Area of Works and Maintenance, 1994-2009

The extension to the Prado overshadowed the Casón, as has almost always been the case. The Casón’s always been the ugly duckling. While no one wanted that to be so, the circumstances, situations and visitors meant that the Casón wasn’t particularly important. The truth is, the Casón has been mistreated throughout its history, from the Count-Duke of Olivares to now. He built a poor quality building, like the Hall of Realms. Then all the functions it’s had: offices of the Department of Fine Arts, the Museum of Artistic reproductions... All these things increasingly spoiled the building. Until the Prado arrived, which re-converted the Casón and completely changed its situation.
The initial idea was to repair the Casón’s roofs, like the extension. But then the president of the Board of Trustees, José María Fernández Ordóñez, and Fernando Checa devised their museological plan and on that basis decided they needed more space. That’s when the idea appeared of making two basements, initially three. When they started doing the soundings they realised there was water from the run-offs from the Retiro. And this essentially prevented them doing the third basement and only two were done as there was already water coming from the foundations of the second basement. They also built a perimeter wall round the Casón to prevent all that run-off water coming from the Retiro.
Another very important thing in the Casón was the restoration of Luca Giordano’s ceiling, which was done alongside the building work. It was all combined and we had to deal with everything going on as the approach was essentially “the Museum doesn’t close”. And if the Museum doesn’t close... At the beginning, even when work started on the roof they were still dealing with visitors in the Casón. It was very amusing, in inverted commas. It was extremely tense. We’ve experienced some tense and complicated situations here. But then you can look back on them afterwards.