Madrid travel guide

Top 10 sights in Madrid

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Museo del Prado

   Opened in 1819 out of the Spanish royal collection, which is why it is so uneven and so extraordinary: the best Velázquez anywhere including Las Meninas, Goya's black paintings and the Third of May, and Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, bought by Philip II.

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2. 

   2© Tim Adams · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Royal Palace of Madrid

   Built from 1738 after the old Alcázar burned down on Christmas Eve 1734, and with three thousand four hundred rooms it is the largest royal palace in western Europe by floor area. The king does not live in it; it is used for state occasions and otherwise open to visitors.

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3. 

   3© Luis García (Zaqarbal) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

   Spain's museum of twentieth-century art, in an eighteenth-century hospital with glass lift towers bolted to the front. Guernica is here, having stayed in New York until 1981 because Picasso refused to let it come while Franco lived.

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4. 

   4© Real Academia Española · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Royal Spanish Academy

   The academy founded in 1713 to regulate Spanish, with forty-six seats each designated by a letter of the alphabet and held for life. Its motto — it cleans, fixes and gives splendour — is printed in the dictionary that four hundred million speakers argue with.

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5. 

   5© Fernando · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Almudena Cathedral

   The cathedral of Madrid, begun in 1883 and not consecrated until 1993 — the city was a capital for four centuries without one, its churches answering to Toledo. The neo-Gothic shell hides an interior finished in the 1990s in hard modern colour, which divides opinion.

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6. 

   6© Kyle Magnuson from Los Angeles, United States · CC BY 2.0

   Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

   The third of the museums on the Prado boulevard, bought by Spain from the Thyssen-Bornemisza family in 1993. It was assembled to fill gaps rather than follow a taste, which turns out to be its strength — early Italian, German, Dutch and American painting the other two lack.

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7. 

   7© Draceane · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Main Square

   The arcaded square of 1619, built as the stage for the state: proclamations, bullfights, canonisations and the burnings of the Inquisition all happened on this paving. The frescoed Casa de la Panadería on the north side was the royal box.

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8. 

   8© tnarik from Spain · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Puerta del Sol

   The busiest square in Spain, and kilometre zero — the point from which the national roads are measured, marked by a plaque in the pavement. The clock above it chimes the twelve strokes at which the country eats twelve grapes on New Year's Eve.

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9. 

   9© pictures Jettcom · CC BY 3.0

   El Retiro Park

   A hundred and twenty-five hectares that were royal until 1868 and are now the city's back garden, listed as World Heritage with the Prado boulevard in 2021. Rowing boats work the lake, and the Crystal Palace of 1887 stands in the trees as an exhibition hall.

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10. 

    10© Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada · CC BY-SA 2.0

    National Museum of Archaeology

    The national archaeological museum, holding the Lady of Elche — an Iberian bust of the fourth century BC whose headdress still has no agreed explanation — along with Visigothic votive crowns and a full-size copy of the Altamira cave in the garden.

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   1

   Palace of Zarzuela

   The palace where the king of Spain actually lives, a seventeenth-century hunting lodge northwest of the city that Juan Carlos moved into in 1962 and which Felipe VI still uses. It is closed to visitors and the reason the Royal Palace is open to them.

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   2

   Temple of Debod

   A Nubian temple of the second century BC that stood fifteen kilometres south of Aswan and would have been drowned by the High Dam. Egypt gave it to Spain in 1968 in thanks for help rescuing Abu Simbel, and it was re-erected here in 1972 — the only ancient Egyptian building in Spain.

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3. 

   3© Choniron · CC BY-SA 3.0 es

   Royal Palace of El Pardo

   One of the older royal residences of Spain, used by the crown since the reign of Henry III of Castile in the fifteenth century. It is administered by Patrimonio Nacional and serves as the guest house for visiting heads of state.

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4. 

   4© Fernando Pascullo · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Alcalá Gate

   A gate of 1778 built for Charles III by Sabatini, with five arches in granite, and reckoned the first triumphal arch put up in Europe since the Roman ones. It stood in the city wall; the wall is gone and the gate now sits in the middle of a roundabout.

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5. 

   5© Luis García (Zaqarbal) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Las Ventas

   The largest bullring in Spain, built in 1929 in neo-Mudéjar brick and tile, holding nearly twenty-four thousand. The San Isidro season in May runs a fight almost every day, and a matador who succeeds here is made; the practice is also increasingly contested in Spain.

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6. 

   6© Miguel Diaz from Boadilla del Monte, España-Spain · CC BY-SA 2.0

   plaza de Cibeles

   The square with the fountain of Cybele in her lion-drawn chariot, carved in 1782, which has become the city's emblem — Real Madrid celebrate their titles round it. The post office of 1919 on one side, all spires and white stone, is now the city hall.

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   7

   Palace of Moncloa

   The prime minister's residence and office, a rebuilt seventeenth-century house on the northwestern edge of the city. The Moncloa Pacts of 1977, which set the economic terms of Spain's transition to democracy, were signed here and are still argued about by that name.

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   8

   Palacio Vistalegre

   An arena on the site of the Vista Alegre bullring of 1908, rebuilt in 2000 as a multipurpose hall that still stages bullfights along with basketball and concerts. It stands in Carabanchel, well outside the tourist circuit.

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9. 

   9© Fernando · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Teatro Real

   The opera house of 1850 facing the palace, shut from 1925 to 1966 because the building was sinking and the roof unsafe. It is now among the busiest opera houses in Europe and the acoustics are better than the exterior suggests.

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10. 

    10© Håkan Svensson Xauxa · CC BY 2.5

    Casa de Campo Park

    Madrid's largest park at seventeen hundred hectares, five times Central Park, and royal hunting ground until the Republic handed it to the city in 1931. It holds the zoo, the fairground and a lake, and the front line ran through it in the siege of 1936-39.

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