How Madrid’s Prado Museum is trying to avoid becoming like ‘the Metro at rush-hour’

People queue outside the Prado in Madrid. Its director, Miguel Falomir, told a press conference earlier this week that the museum, which welcomed a record 3.5 million visitors last year, felt a threshold had been reached. Photograph: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket/Getty Images

Friday morning found Diego Velázquez striking the familiar pose he has held for the past 370 years, staring out, brush in one hand, palette in the other, from the huge canvas of Las Meninas.

The 14 people who stood before the painting to meet the Spanish artist’s haughty gaze – not to mention the heavy eyes of the dozy mastiff in the picture’s foreground – were among the first visitors of the day to Madrid’s Prado Museum.