Flexibility of the glycine-rich flaps is known to be essential for catalytic activity of the HIV-1 protease, but their exact conformations at the different stages of the enzymatic pathway remain subject to much debate. While hundreds of crystal structures of protease-inhibitor complexes have been solved, only about a dozen inhibitor-free protease structures have been reported. These apo-structures reveal a large diversity of flap conformations, ranging from closed, to semi-open and wide-open. To evaluate the average structure in solution, we measured residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) and compared these to values calculated for crystal structures representative of the closed, semi-open and wide-open states. The RDC data clearly indicate that the inhibitor-free protease, on average, adopts a closed conformation in solution that is very similar to the inhibitor-bound state. By contrast, a highly drug-resistant protease mutant, PR20, adopts the wide-open flap conformation.