Its headquarters, built expressly for the institution, are located next to the Prado Museum and the church of Los Jerónimos, very close to the Paseo del Arte (Art Walk).

The classical style building was built by Miguel Aguado de la Sierra between 1891 and 1894 and inaugurated on 1 April of that year, attended by Alphonse XIII, still a minor at this time, and his mother, the Regent Queen María Cristina. The building is rectangular in shape and has three floors and a basement. The main entrance is surrounded by a small garden. The front of the building is adorned by an arcade of four Doric columns crowned with a triangular pediment. The main Auditorium boasts four stained glass windows with allegorical motifs, created in 1893 by the C.P Dragant workshop in Bordeaux.

This site houses the Real Academia’s departments of Direction, Administration, Management,  the Standing Committee of the ASALE, Library and Archive, Communication, Technology CORPES XXI and other general and administrative services. The Lexicography Institute, the NDHE, Contemporary Spanish and Legal Spanish departments, the Rafael Lapesa Institute, the IT and Computational Linguistics departments and the School of Hispanic Lexicography and Technology are located in the Centre of Studies, a building in Calle Serrano, which is on loan to the corporation by the Spanish Government.