The Gallery, backstage

The Royal Collections Gallery is an avant-garde building, both in its design and its construction. It occupies an area of 40,000 square metres, of which 8,000 square metres are open to the public. In our latest YouTube video, we invite you to take a walk through the other 32,000 square metres. They are distributed between technical areas (with kilometres of piping, ducts and cables), work areas (offices, educational workshops, security rooms, restoration area) and storerooms (rooms designed to house the resources of Patrimonio Nacional in all their artistic diversity).  

Maintenance and air-conditioning rooms 

“The biggest challenge is to maintain a constant temperature and humidity in the exhibition halls, similar to what we have here”, explainsLuis Baena, head of the Maintenance Service. The building has several courtyards where air is captured and after purification, heated and condensed to the required levels. Engineers have also achieved an efficient air-conditioning system by developing a thermal ring that reuses hot wastewater as domestic hot water.  

2,000 metres of storerooms

Located on Floor -4, the Gallery storerooms are divided into six large-capacity rooms equipped with the latest technology in the sector, with a multitude of compact cabinets and automated selectors that place them amongst the best in Europe. This is the opinion of José Luis Valverde, head of the Registration and Documentation Department, and he add that "as they were designed ex novo, we have been able to plan the distribution of the rooms and optimise the space to the maximum".     

Multi-purpose room

Lourdes de Luis, head of Restoration at Patrimonio Nacional, introduces the biggest work area of the Gallery, the so-called “multi-purpose room”. "This marvellous space allows us to undertake large-scale projects, for example, the altarpiece from the Monastery of La Encarnación displayed on the ramps, which we have restored here and which is more than 8 metres high. The Gallery, she adds, is designed to provide "preventive conservation, with incredible improvements in accessibility".