Redbeard Travels: Madrid one more time 9

Most of the freebies in Madrid depend on good timing. It's all about showing up on the right day, or at the appointed hour. For instance, show up at 3.30pm at the Lazaro Galdiano Museum and you're free to walk around this private art collection housed in a lovely old villa.

Or you can show up like we did right after lunch and be asked to fork over €4 each.

The main reason this freebie didn't work out for us is that many guidebooks and websites claim that the Lazaro Galdiano Museum is free all day Wednesday. I had not bothered to check the museum's official website which confirms free entry actually applies the last hour it is open Monday-Saturday (closed Tuesday) as well as Sunday afternoon 2-3pm. Next time, I'll click the Google Translate button!

As it was, the €4 each we paid at the time was about right for this small but rich collection. These days though admission has gone up to €6, so I recommend visitors take the effort to visit during happy hour! One hour may not seem like much time to explore a musuem, but as mentioned this is in what used to be a private residence (albeit one with four floors to visit).

Senor Galdiano trained as an art critic and journalist, not exactly the professions you'd expect that would enable a person to amass a fabulous collection of Old Masters, but then he did establish his own publishing house in 1888 and married into money. At the time Spanish art was not fashionable so he picked up some relatively cheap late medieval Spanish painting, although by artists whose names have been lost to history.

Famous names like Goya, Greco, Murillo, Velazquez and Zurbaran do feature in the collection, as well as Italian and Flemish painters like Tiepolo and Bosch, as you can see in the selection below. Interspersed with the paintings are many examples of applied arts like medals, coins, intricate carpets, carved ivories, bronze statuettes, Limoges enamels and miniature portraits.

To be honest some of these decorative items were for me a bit too precious (ie, overly fussy) and towards the end it felt like there was one display case too many. Thankfully there is an elegant cage lift with a plump velvet sofa inside where you can regain your composure while descending from the top floor.

Fancy more freebies? Click back soon to hear about the sculptures lining one of the city's busiest streets and the city's royal palace.