Ateneo of Madrid

How can such a small facade hide a cultural treasure such as this one? Prado Street (not Paseo del Prado), houses one of Madrid’s biggest cultural places: the Ateneo (Athenaeum), named Scientific, Literary and Artistic, almost nothing!

A staircase welcomes you, as if it invited you to elevate your spirit and submerge into the hidden intellectual secrets and human curiosities. In spite of its gloomy darkness and false modesty of its façade, the Ateneo is a beautiful building inside and it houses an enormous quantity of knowledge and history of Spain.

I entered almost afraid that someone would tell me I couldn’t go in, but the nice receptionists told me that I was in an open institution and that I could visit some of the rooms that were open to the public, and that satisfied me. The spiral staircase and the room of portraits, with distinguished figures of the history of thought in Spain, are worth a visit. You can feel the weight of History and you feel almost as if you were in a place of cult.

The Ateneo is a scientific, literary and artistic institution of Madrid; a private company formed by the members and its governing board.

Anyone can join: just fill out a form and show your ID and four passport pictures. The membership is 110€ (50€ for under 25's) and 50 € for three months. It currently has 3,500 members.

Book launches, conferences, exhibitions, films and documentaries, besides its extensive library, are part of its programming.

A plaque at the entrance says that 'the Ateneo of Madrid was founded in 1835. Their first headquarters were at the corner of the street between El Prado and San Agustín, Plaza del Ángel and Montera street.