The Museo Romántico, closed for renovation for the last nine years, will open to the public again on December 3rd. I remember it as one of the most charming of Madrid's lesser museums, though its new name - Museo Nacional del Romanticismo - is truly horrible.

I say 'lesser museum', but however overshadowed it may be by the Museo del Prado, to mention only the most famous of Madrid's galleries, other cities less well provided with museums and art galleries would be proud to have a cultural attraction like the Romantic Museum or National Museum of Romanticism. Less for its collections, though these are interesting enough, than for the atmosphere that it recreates. The museum is in an aristocratic town house built in 1776, large but unprepossessing from the outside. Twenty-six of its rooms will be visitable, "reformed and polished like veined marble," as Rafael Fraguas puts it in El País. It is this evocation of a vanished lifestyle that makes the Museo Romántico - as I shall insist on thinking of it - so appealing.

Romanticism is difficult to define exactly, but it involved a preference for emotion over rationality. It reached the world in the late 19th century from the north of Europe, especially France and Germany, where it heavily influenced art, literature and music, even political thinking. But the most important Spanish Romantic composer, Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga (aka "the Spanish Mozart) died aged only 19, and it is in art and literature that Spanish Romanticism saw its greatest expression.

Reflected in the Museo Romántico you will find a decidedly comfortable Romanticism, far removed from the tuberculosis-stricken starving Bohemians beloved elsewhere. Rather, this is a wealthy, high-society Romanticism, from the fumoir (men-only, naturally) and the portrait-lined billiards room to the sumptuous ballroom. Indeed, the 'other' Romanticism is mocked in two paintings in the museum's collection, both by Leonardo Alenza - Sátira del Suicidio Romántico and Sátira del Suicidio por Amor. Both suicides are depicted with Charles Adams-like cruelty, one trying crazily to hurl himself over an edge while stabbing himself at the same time, the other, a wizened old suitor set on shooting himself while on his knees before the object of his devotion, as old and wrinkled as he is.

The Museo Romántico's other works of art include a notable Goya (in the chapel) and an interesting portrait of A Carlist Conspirator by Valeriano Domínguez Bécquer (brother of Spain's greatest Romantic poet, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer). I know nothing about Valeriano Bécquer's politics, but the Carlists were reactionary, anti-liberal absolutists, the Conspirator is depicted with unmistakable sympathy, and Spanish Romanticism was more often royalist than revolutionary (except when royalty took the side of the liberals). In any case, however interesting they may be, it is not these pieces that fascinate visitors as much as the curtains, carpets and upholstery, the fabrics which give the house a lived-in feel.

Museo Nacional del Romanticismo
C/ San Mateo, 13
28004 Madrid
Tel: 91 448 10 45

The reported standard ticket price is €3.
Opening hours - unknown for the moment. Almost all museums in Spain are closed on Mondays.