The Royal Collections are held in a modern building next to the Royal Palace that houses 40,000 artifacts from six centuries of collections and had around 700 on display. We were intending to visit the Royal Palace but that had sold out so I opted for the collections instead, which in hindsight was sensible as we have been a bit overloaded with palaces already! Admission was €15 each and it opened prompty at 10.00. After leaving our bags in the locker we started our tour.

The gallery is split into two sections, the first details the Austrian monarchs, 16th - 18th centuries and the second the Bourbon monarchs, 18th - 21st centuries. This was a fantastic museum with a sensible selection of artifacts but laid out in a complementary way and with plenty of historical context information. We spent over 2.5 hours exploring the two floors and there were, as you'd expect, numerous items that were just fabulous, from paintings to tapestries to armour to blueprints to tableware.

There were descriptions of every monarch and their achievements and historical context and then further information on the individual items associated with that monarch. There were several excellent video presentations too, my favourite being the evolution of some of the royal palaces. The history of the monarchy in the last century was particularly interesting with the interruptions caused by the Spanish Civil War and the 1920's coup d'etat and then the restoration of the monarchy in 1975.

One advantage of the galleries being in a new building was that they had a decent cafe, on site! After such an overwhelming amount of information we needed to sit down and process it before our next stop. I had the chocolate lava cake - which was delicious - and Mum and Deb had more humdrum desserts, which they found enjoyable.