★★★★★ 5.0
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Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales
The newest friend hanging above your head has been dead for 150 years! This whale skeleton weighs as much as three cars and arrived in 2010. King Charles III opened this Palace of Arts and Industry on Calle José Gutiérrez Abascal way back in 1771—making it one of Europe's oldest museums. Eleven million specimens hide inside these Chamartín walls! A hundred-year-old dinosaur replica has amazed kids since the 1920s. You're standing inside nearly 250 years of natural wonders. Ready to have your mind blown?
Did You Know?
- : The Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales began as the Real Gabinete de Historia Natural, founded by King Carlos III on October 17, 1771, making it one of the oldest natural history museums in the world and the first of its kind in Spain, originally created to rival the famous cabinets of curiosities in Enlightenment-era Europe.
- The museum's first major collection came from Pedro Franco Dávila, a Spanish merchant from Guayaquil, whose private trove of natural specimens and scientific books formed the core of the museum's holdings; Dávila himself became the institution's first director, and the museum's early fame was so great that crowds were so large at its opening in 1776 that six soldiers were needed to control the throngs of visitors.
- Among its most legendary specimens is the complete skeleton of a Megatherium (giant ground sloth), sent from Argentina in the 18th century after a royal decree ordered all natural curiosities from Spanish territories to be sent to Madrid; this fossil became a scientific sensation and helped establish Spain as a center for paleontological research.