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City guide · Spain
Madrid stands about 660 metres above sea level on the River Manzanares, near the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, and covers 605.77 km² with over 3.4 million people in the city in 2025 and around 6.8 million in the metropolitan area. It started as a walled outpost of the Emirate of Córdoba in the late ninth century and only became a capital in 1561, when the Hispanic Monarchy fixed its court there. Much of a first visit is one walkable band: the Plaza Mayor, the Royal Palace, the Buen Retiro park of 1631, and the three museums strung along the Paseo del Prado.
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The Prado is Spain's national painting museum, and the building it occupies was never meant to hold pictures. Juan de Villanueva designed it in 1785 for a Natural History Cabinet, on the orders of Charles III.
The Royal Palace of Madrid stands on the ridge above the Manzanares where the medieval Alcazar stood until fire destroyed it on Christmas Eve 1734.
The Reina Sofia is Spain's national museum of modern and contemporary art, and the building most visitors enter is a former hospital.
El Retiro is the historic municipal garden that fills the ground east of the Paseo del Prado, and it is the only part of central Madrid large enough to lose an afternoon in.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza is the private-collection third of Madrid's Paseo del Arte, standing on Paseo del Prado at number 8 in the Villahermosa palace, a few minutes' walk from the Prado and the Reina Sofia.
Plaza Mayor is the enclosed rectangular square at the centre of Hapsburg Madrid, the oldest quarter of the city, and it is a piece of deliberate town planning rather than a space that grew by accident.
Puerta del Sol is a semi-circular public square in the exact centre of Madrid, and it is a junction before it is a monument.
The Templo de Debod is an Egyptian temple standing on a hilltop in the Parque de la Montaña, a few minutes' walk west of Plaza de España.
The Real Jardín Botánico is a working research institute of the CSIC, Spain's national research council, that happens to be open to the public.
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando is a working academy on Calle de Alcalá that happens to keep one of the best picture collections in Spain on its upper floors.
Set your days, your pace and the hours you actually want to be out. The planner works around closing days and travel time, and leaves room to eat.
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