Fine Art & Antiques Luxury Travel in Spain: Magical Spain, from our HQ in Madrid, Spain oftailor-made made luxury travel in Spain and Portugal for Americans. This can include custom antiques buying tours for tourists and trade professionals
This can include tailor-made world-class antiques tours, historic castle, garden and home visits and unique art, music and cultural experiences in Spain and Portugal. This might be a 18 day comprehensive private luxury multi-country tour of Iberia to short antique, design or art weekends in Madrid, Seville, Barcelona or Lisbon. Contact us to request a call from our travel team.
Be inspired by masterpieces of art and antiques touring Spain and Portugal in luxury style
With the expertise and care of top Spanish art historians compare contemporary Spanish art with the works of past masters in Madrid. This can include world-class masterpieces of Picasso, Goya, Velazquez, El Greco, Dali, Ruben, Hieronymus Bosch or Caravaggio. Imagine uncovering secrets of The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch’s most complex and enigmatic creation and discovering hidden meanings of Picasso’s Guernica. Contact us for availability & more info.
Later discover a rich collection of fine Spanish ceramics, antiques, and textiles. or learn more about the fascinating history behind certain peculiar aesthetic fascinations of the nobility of Spain and Portugal.
Each day is designed to be a fascinating and exclusive cultural adventure collection. Our Spain art and antique luxury tours are designed to inspire and inform and can be tailor-made to fit your interest and dates. These private trips are customized based on whether you have a growing interest or a historic passion for the unique world of art and antiques in Spain or Portugal. Contact us for availability & more info.
Antiques & Art Luxury Private Travel in Spain: Antique or vintage ?
The terms often used to describe antiques and collectibles tours can be confusing. Like many things, there’s not complete agreement about the definitions. Here are the definitions we will use:
• Antiques – at Magical Spain Private Travel, we use the generally agreed definition of an ‘antique’ as an artwork, items of furniture or decorative objects that are 100+ years old. Our Spanish family and amigos would likely say an antique is much older!
• Collectables – is often used for pieces that are collected but that are not over a hundred years old. At times the term vintage is used instead. The term: ‘antiques and collectables’ is often used to cover old items that may fit both/either categories.
• Vintage – we use vintage to mean a collectable item that’s at least 20 years old, but less than the 100 years old specified for antiques.
Below are a few of our notes as we develop this page on antique buying tour of Spain for tourist and professionals
Spanish Art & Antiques Travel in Spain and Portugal:
In Madrid, El Rastro is a famous Sunday morning market. Like most markets, caveat emptor. Here the goods range from serious antiquities to low quality clutter. Old Madrid’s markets can lead to discovering unusual and curious objects.
Spanish antiques can be quite distinctive and decorative. But as Spain has become one of the world’s top tourims destination prices have risen. So antiques in Spain are not often found at inexpensive prices unless you have a time machine!
- On a recent trip to Andalucia our clients discovers traditional Castilian sideboards, antique oak doors, brass hardware, wonderful hand carved dark wooden chairs, upholstered in leather with brass studs.
- Weekend “rastros” (flea markets) are a good place to start and take place in most major Andalusian cities (as well as several towns).
- If you can negotiate the price in Spanish you will benefit.
- Don’t forget the antique shops and second-hand dealers located throughout the province where you can find all kinds of items, as well as request a search on a particular piece you may be looking for.
- Check out house auctions being advertised in the weekly newspaper because, as we all know well – one man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
A few more ideas for art and antique cultural luxury travel in Spain:
Alcocer Anticuarios. The Alcocer family have devoted their lives to buying and selling antiques since the Spanish Civil War.
http://www.alcoceranticuarios.com
Another possible source for antiques in Spain is Manuel Iriestra at Calle Ribera de Curtidores 12 (El Rastro). Iriestra is Vice President of the Association of Antique Dealers of Madrid.
I love this shop. If there is one peculiar shop in the centre of Madrid this is, undoubtedly, Casa Postal. This traditional space is a collector’s paradise with post cards and photographs displaying original images of Spain and mementos of past times. Upon entering one feels like they have been transported in a time machine where different items of postal history, like censorship, prephilately, etc and photographic cameras coexist with items related to drinks like Coca-Cola and beers, such as posters, coolers and openers, tin and music boxes, maps, cutouts, film programmes… This early 20th century bazaar has an endearing toy collection, which will probably bring back memories with vintage porcelain dolls or the larger papier-mâché dolls.
Asiana, Oriental antiques by day & restaurant at night.
The Lázaro Galdiano, a museum for antique lovers.
This museum showcases the personal collection of the Spanish financier and art collector. The permanent collection stands out for its great diversity of sculptures, paintings, jewelry, coats of arms, bronze figures, textiles, furniture, enameled work, silverware, glass and drawings, to name just a few of the items on display.
There are also Roman busts, medieval swords, 16th-century bronze statues, rugs, tapestries, religious artifacts and lamps. The museum opened in 1951 and to a great extent still preserves the original atmosphere of the space from when Lázaro Galdiano and his family lived here. The Renaissance revival building underwent a major restoration process in 2001 to renovate and reorganize the exhibition rooms.
www.esmadrid.com/en/portal.do…
In addition to the Lázaro Galdiano museum, the Cerralbo museum to be re-opened on December 14.
There are many antique shops in the Salamanca Barrio. Try the area near Calle Goya and Serrano, also Velazquez.
http://www.antiquesandboutiques.com/
http://www.travel-quest.co.uk/tq-antiques.htm