The Prado takes an unconventional look at Spain's most iconic art museum. Focusing on the Prado as a space of urban leisure, Eugenia Afinoguenova highlights the political history of the museum's relation to the monarchy, the church, and the liberal nation state, as well as its role as an extension of Madrid's social center, the Prado Promenade.

Rather than assume that visitors agreed about how to interpret the museum, Afinoguenova approaches the history of the Prado as a debate about culture and leisure. Just like those crossing its threshold, who did not always trace a firm...