After decades of closure and years of renovation, the Duchess of Osuna’s Palacio del Capricho will be transformed from an almost forgotten ruin into a museum dedicated to the Madrid Enlightenment and the figure of its owner. The reopening is scheduled for 2027 as a new cultural space for the City Council, integrated into El Capricho Park on the Alameda de Osuna.
The Palace of the Dukes of Osuna, located in the heart of El Capricho Park, was built in the late 18th century as a retreat for Madrid’s enlightened high society. It was commissioned by María Josefa de Pimentel Téllez-Girón, 9th Duchess of Osuna, one of the great patrons of the Spanish Enlightenment: a cultured woman, a lover of music, theater, and the arts, who turned the estate into a veritable laboratory of ideas, salons, and performances.
Writers, musicians, scientists… and also Francisco de Goya passed through its halls ; he painted iconic works for the Osunas such as The Witches’ Sabbath and The Swing, in addition to the series of engravings titled Matters of Witches. The palace was, in its day, much more than a recreational residence: it was a place of recreation, a setting designed for enjoying concerts, theatrical performances, strolls among romantic temples, and long conversations about the country’s future.
From an aristocratic enclave to a ruin left closed for decades
Subsequent history was not so kind. After the splendor of the 18th and 19th centuries, the El Capricho estate—and with it the palace— suffered through wars, changes in ownership, neglect, and military use. During the Civil War, it even housed General Miaja’s famous bunker, and in the 20th century, it endured long periods of neglect that seriously damaged the building’s structures, roofs, and interiors.
The park was declared a Historic Garden in 1934 and became municipal property in 1974, reopening to the public in 2000 following a major landscape restoration project. But the palace was left behind: closed, fenced off, and excluded from visitor itineraries, becoming that forgotten palace that many viewed from afar without being able to enter, while restoration project after project remained nothing more than a pipe dream.
The major renovation: from a building at risk to a museum
The definitive turning point came in the last decade, when the City Council decided to make a serious commitment to the comprehensive restoration of the palace and its conversion into a museum. The General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Urban Landscape has carried out a restoration in two major phases between 2022 and 2025, with a total investment of nearly 6.9 million euros allocated to preserving the facades, roofs, structure, and historic rooms.
The first phase focused on structural consolidation, roof repairs, wall restoration, and the elimination of defects that jeopardized the building’s safety. The second phase, now completed, addressed interior refurbishment, the restoration of unique rooms, and the installation of necessary systems (climate control, security, accessibility) for its future cultural use. At the same time, the City Council has put the museum exhibits out to bid for approximately 2.3 million euros, which places the museum’s opening in the first quarter of 2027.
What has been restored inside
Although part of the original interior was lost over time, the restoration work has made it possible to recover key elements of the historic palace. Among these are the Duke and Duchess’s private rooms, the tiles in the formal dining room—which reproduce the famous Issos mosaic found in Pompeii—and the grand main staircase, which once again stands in its original form.
The ceilings with decorative paintings in some rooms, historic floors, and ornamental elements have been restored to return much of the palace’s 18th-century atmosphere, without compromising the demands of a 21st-century museum. When it opens, the tour will allow visitors to follow, room by room, the original layout of the spaces that once hosted salons, concerts, dances, and art exhibitions, now accompanied by panels, objects, and multimedia resources.
What the new El Capricho Museum will look like
The future museum at the Palace of the Dukes of Osuna is conceived as a space dedicated to three main themes: the figure of the Duchess of Osuna, the history of the El Capricho estate, and the artistic and social context of the Enlightenment in Madrid. There will be a permanent collection of objects, documents, and works of art linked to the family, the palace, and the landscape and architectural trends of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The museum project includes sensory exhibitions, archives, activity rooms, a hybrid library (print and digital), and halls for chamber concerts and small theatrical performances, thereby restoring the site’s original purpose as a center of cultural life. There are also plans for the Prado Museum to temporarily loan some paintings related to the family and to Goya, building on an idea proposed years ago: to transform the palace into a space for sharing its history and Enlightenment culture.
