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The Museo del Traje. Centro de Investigación del Patrimonio Etnológico, is a National Museum which depends on the Ministry of Culture. Its basic aim is to promote an understanding of the historical development of costume and testify to the ethnological heritage representative of the different cultures of the peoples of Spain

The Building

The building where the collections of the Museum are housed at present was built between 1971 and 1973 and inaugurated in 1975 as the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art. The architects, Jaime López de Asiaín and Angel Díaz Domínguez, followed the specifications of the 1968 Congress of Museum Architecture in its design. The project was awarded the National Prize for Architecture in 1969.
Conceived from the outset as a museum, this building is ideally suited to this function because of its purpose-built interior, the ease of its flow and the clean flexible lines of its design.
Recent renovations have updated some of its services and facilities to bring them into line with current technology and have also restored the original open-plan structure of the lower floors, recreating their relationship with the surrounding gardens and their exceptional views.

Inside the Museum

People who visit a museum only see a part, sometimes just a very small part, of the whole institution. As well as the exhibition rooms, a museum has many services and departments which visitors often do not even know exist.
On the other hand, although all their work is directed towards the museum visitor, the staff who work in these sections may hardly ever come into direct contact with the public.
You are invited to get to know the inside workings of the Museum and discover our day-to-day activities

Permanent collection

Due to the fragility of the pieces on show and the conservation measures the costumes cannot be exhibited to long in the show cases. For this reason the permanent collection is updated very often and sometimes visitors are note even aware of it because the changes keep strictly to the time and style of the previous ones.
On the other hand, there is a show case (Treasures of the past) dedicated to the loans in which we exhibit very ancient pieces coming from other institutions. This case rotates every sixth month.
It is exceptional to find samples of costumes dated before the 18th century. Because of the lack of pieces, their fragility and because they are scattered all over the world , the Museo del Traje has planned a space to be used for temporal exhibits in which the most significant loans coming from national and international institutions can rotate.