Charles III commissioned the building in 1785 as part of a plan to give Madrid a monumental space along the Paseo del Prado. The architect Juan de Villanueva designed it for a Natural History Cabinet. Work stopped during the Peninsular War, when Napoleonic troops used the premises as cavalry headquarters and a gunpowder store. It resumed under Ferdinand VII, who made it a Royal Museum of Paintings and Sculptures.
The museum opened to the public in November 1819. Short rear pavilions were added between 1900 and 1960, and the Casón del Buen Retiro, able to display up to 400 paintings, was later brought into the institution. Rafael Moneo's expansion of 2007 raised the exhibition space to 16,000 square meters (172,000 sq ft).
The collection holds about 8,200 drawings, 7,600 paintings, 4,800 prints and 1,000 sculptures. The museum had 3,337,550 visitors in 2023.
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