Madrid, Spain

Top places to visit in Madrid

6 places worth your time in Madrid, with what each is actually like and when to go.

Last updated 2026-08-08

One of the great European painting collections — Velázquez, Goya, Bosch — in a purpose-built neoclassical gallery.

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Tip: Free entry in the last two hours daily, which is busy but genuinely workable.

Twentieth-century Spanish art, built around Picasso's Guernica with its preparatory studies alongside.

A former royal garden with a boating lake, the glass Palacio de Cristal and Sunday crowds of buskers and drummers.

The largest functioning royal palace in Europe by floor area, still used for state ceremony.

A restored iron-and-glass market hall given over to stalls of prepared food and wine.

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Tip: Convenient and expensive. The neighbourhood bars in La Latina, two streets away, are where locals actually eat.

The arcaded seventeenth-century square, and the tapas district running downhill from it.

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