After more than a decade behind closed doors, the Royal Paintings Museum at El Escorial reopens to the public on Thursday, returning nearly 100 paintings assembled by Spain's kings to the palace where they were gathered. The Times was given an exclusive preview as technicians put the finishing touches to the displays. The works span the great names of European painting, including Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Rogier van der Weyden and Michiel Coxcie. Twenty-one paintings enter the permanent hang for the first time, and almost a quarter of those on view were specially restored for the reopening. Curators have abandoned the traditional arrangement by chronology and national school. Instead, the hang tells the story of how Spanish monarchs built the collection and used art to project the power and image of the crown. The setting is inseparable from the story. El Escorial, commissioned by Philip II and thought to be the largest Renaissance building in the world, became one of Europe's great artistic centres in the 16th century; Rubens visited with Velazquez in 1628, both inspired by its Titians. Four rooms are devoted to Philip II before the narrative moves through Philip IV, Charles II, Charles IV and Isabella II, tracing how a Habsburg creation was sustained and reshaped by the Bourbons. Among the highlights is Coxcie's Allegory of the Redemption, a hinged diptych by the artist known as the Flemish Raphael whose panels open and close on stages of a Christian narrative, and Van der Weyden's monumental El Calvario, the Escorial Crucifixion, showing Christ beneath a vast red canopy flanked by the Virgin and St John in luminous white. Extensively restored, it had effectively been hidden in plain sight after changing tastes demoted it to an inaccessible corner. Two Titians hang together, including Saint Margaret, said to be the first painting Titian sent to Philip. For curator Carmen Garcia-Frias, the reopening offers a complete vision of the collecting of Spain's kings.