Madrid
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The capital was moved to there from Valladolid in 1560.
Madrid is in the middle of Spain, in the Community of Madrid. About five million people live in Madrid.
Spain's Royal Palace is in Madrid. It is the largest palace in all of Western Europe. But the king and his family do not live there anymore; they live in a smaller palace, and only use the Royal Palace for important events, like meeting other kings and presidents. One can go inside the Royal Palace, see the many beautiful paintings and expensive furniture and jewelry, and learn about the past kings and queens of Spain.
There are also a lot of very big and important art museums in Madrid, like the Prado Museum, the Queen Sofia Museum, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. These show off paintings, sculptures, and other works of art from some of the most famous artists in the world.
Many famous, important, and valuable works of art are in these museums. For example, the Queen Sofia museum has a famous painting by Pablo Picasso, called Guernica. Picasso painted this painting to show how sad and angry it made him when the German Nazis destroyed a town in Spain called Guernica in 1937. Picasso had said that the painting should never return to Spain until it was a democracy again. Once that happened, they built the Queen Sofia museum just to have a good place to put it.
