There's a particular expression you'll see on madrileños' faces when tourists stop in the middle of the pavement to photograph a building. It's not hostility, exactly. It's something closer to the look a cat gives you when you try to explain why you're late — a sort of patient, vaguely amused indifference that says: Yes, the building is nice. It's been nice for three hundred years. Could you perhaps admire it from the side?
This is Madrid in a nutshell. A city that knows what it is, has known for centuries, and feels absolutely no pressure to perform for visitors. Rome seduces you. Paris poses. Barcelona puts on a show. Madrid just... is. Take it or leave it.
Most people take it. Eventually.
The shape of three days
Three days in Madrid follows a particular arc, whether you plan it or not.
Day one is the collision. You arrive with energy and expectations, you see the Royal Palace, you think "this is enormous and slightly intimidating," you walk to Plaza Mayor, you realise everyone around you is also a tourist, you eat something mediocre because you're hungry and there, you end up at Templo de Debod at sunset almost by accident, and suddenly the city makes sense for about fifteen minutes. Then you're exhausted and your feet are communicating their displeasure in no uncertain terms.
Day two is the adjustment. You've figured out that lunch doesn't happen until 2 PM and dinner doesn't happen until 9 PM, and fighting this is pointless. You spend the morning in the Prado, which is either transcendent or overwhelming depending on your relationship with seventeenth-century religious painting. You discover Retiro Park and understand why madrileños seem so relaxed despite living in a city of three million people — they have 125 hectares of green space where they can pretend the city doesn't exist. You sit down somewhere and accidentally stay for two hours. This is correct.
Day three is the infiltration. You have opinions now. You know which metro exit to use. You've identified the coffee place near your hotel that isn't a tourist trap. You walk down Gran Vía and feel something that might be familiarity, or might just be resignation. You end up in La Latina in the evening, doing the tapas crawl thing where you have one drink at one bar and move to the next, and somewhere around the third bar you realise you're having an unreasonable amount of fun for someone who's essentially just eating small plates and walking short distances.
Then you leave, and you're not entirely sure what happened, but you'd probably do it again.
The Royal Palace, or: Spain does not do things by halves
The Palacio Real is the largest functioning royal palace in Europe, which is a polite way of saying it's absolutely ridiculous. 135,000 square metres. Nearly 3,000 rooms. Ceilings so elaborately frescoed that your neck hurts after five minutes.
The Spanish royal family doesn't actually live here — they have a more modest place outside the city, presumably because living in a building with 3,000 rooms gets lonely — but it's still used for state functions. Which means occasionally it closes without warning because someone important is having lunch.
The practical details: €12 to get in, €6 if you're a student, senior, or child. But here's the thing almost nobody mentions in the first paragraph — EU citizens and residents can enter for free Monday to Thursday during the last two hours before closing. In winter that's 4 PM to 6 PM; in summer it's 6 PM to 8 PM. Yes, it gets crowded. No, it's not unbearable. Bring ID.
The place to stand: the main staircase. Not for the architecture, though it's impressive — for the moment when you look up, see the ceiling fresco depicting the Spanish monarchy's glory, and think about how someone had to paint that while lying on scaffolding for months. Suddenly your job seems fine.
What everyone photographs: the Throne Room. What's actually more interesting: the Royal Armoury, one of the best collections of historical arms and armour in the world, and significantly less crowded than the main palace rooms.
Time needed: about 90 minutes if you're selective, two and a half hours if you want to see everything. The audioguide costs €4 and is genuinely useful, which cannot be said for all audioguides.
Catedral de la Almudena, or: What happens when a church takes 110 years to build
Directly across from the palace sits Madrid's cathedral, which has the dubious distinction of being both very old-looking and remarkably new. Construction started in 1883. It was consecrated in 1993. That's 110 years, for those keeping track, during which Spain experienced two republics, a civil war, a dictatorship, and a transition to democracy. The cathedral just kept going.
The result is architecturally... interesting. The exterior is neo-classical to match the palace across the way. The interior is neo-Gothic, sort of. The ceiling is painted in colours that can only be described as "unexpected" — greens, blues, geometric patterns that look vaguely modern. It's as if each generation of builders thought: Well, the previous lot made their choices, now we'll make ours.
Some people hate it. Some people find the eclecticism charming. Most people spend about fifteen minutes inside, think "huh," and leave.
Entry is free, with a suggested donation of €1. The rooftop museum costs €6 and offers decent views if you haven't had your fill of palace views already.
Time needed: 15-20 minutes, unless you're genuinely interested in the museum.
Plaza Mayor: Where tourists go to look at other tourists
Every city has one. The big central square with the historic buildings and the outdoor restaurants with the laminated menus in six languages. Plaza Mayor is Madrid's version, and there's no point pretending you won't go — you will, because it's there, it's beautiful, and it's in all the photos.
What you should know: the restaurants ringing the plaza are designed to extract money from people who don't know better. A coffee that costs €1.50 around the corner costs €5 here. A plate of mediocre paella runs €18-22. The waiters are efficient in a way that suggests they've calculated exactly how many tourists they can process per hour.
Go to Plaza Mayor. Look at the beautiful seventeenth-century architecture. Appreciate that this was once the site of bullfights, executions, and the coronation of kings. Take your photos. Then walk literally two minutes in any direction and eat somewhere else.
The nearby streets to know: Calle Cuchilleros (old-fashioned taverns, reasonable prices), Calle de la Cava Baja (the tapas street, more on this later), and the area around Mercado de San Miguel (pretty but pricey).
Time needed: 15-30 minutes for the square itself. The surrounding streets deserve more.
The bocadillo de calamares: Madrid's inexplicable signature dish
Here's something that makes no geographical sense: Madrid's most iconic food is a fried squid sandwich. Madrid is 300 kilometres from the nearest coast. There is no logical reason for this city to have built its street food identity around seafood.
And yet.
The bocadillo de calamares is a simple thing — white bread roll, fried squid rings, maybe a squeeze of lemon or some aioli if you're feeling adventurous. It looks like nothing special. It costs between €3.50 and €5 at the right places, significantly more at the wrong ones. And it's been the default quick lunch in central Madrid for decades.
The bars to know, all within two minutes of Plaza Mayor:
- La Campana (Calle Botoneras, 6): The most famous. There's usually a queue, and the queue is deserved. Fresh squid from Galicia every morning, fried to order. Cash only.
- La Ideal (Calle Botoneras, 4): Next door, equally good, marginally less crowded.
- Bar Postas (Calle Postas, 13): Old-school freiduría, no-nonsense service, excellent product.
The tourist trap to avoid: anywhere on Plaza Mayor itself, and most places with photos of the food on the menu.
Eat standing at the bar. This is the way.
Mercado de San Miguel: Beautiful, expensive, worth fifteen minutes
The building itself is gorgeous — one of the finest surviving examples of iron architecture in Madrid, built in 1916 when covered markets were the height of modernity. The interior is all wrought iron and glass, carefully restored and beautifully lit.
The food is... fine. Good quality, but priced for tourists and designed for grazing rather than eating. Think €4-6 for a small tapa that would cost €2.50 elsewhere. The oysters are fresh. The jamón is excellent. The experience of eating while standing at a high table surrounded by other tourists is pleasant enough.
Go, admire the architecture, have one or two things, leave. Don't try to make it your lunch — you'll spend €30 before you're actually full.
Hours: Sunday to Thursday 10 AM to midnight, Friday and Saturday until 1 AM.
Templo de Debod: The thing that shouldn't be there
An Egyptian temple in Madrid. Built in the second century BC. Dedicated to Amun and Isis. Sitting on a hill in a public park near Plaza de España, surrounded by locals doing yoga and tourists taking sunset photos.
This is not a replica. It's the actual temple, dismantled stone by stone in Egypt and shipped to Spain in 1968 as a thank-you gift for helping save monuments from the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. It was rebuilt facing east-to-west, exactly as it originally stood on the banks of the Nile, which means the sunset hits it in precisely the way Egyptian architects intended 2,200 years ago.
The interior is small and mostly bare — some reliefs, some information panels, a few models showing what the temple complex once looked like. Interesting if you're into Egyptology, skippable if you're not.
But the exterior, particularly at sunset, is something else. The temple sits in a shallow reflecting pool, the sky turns improbable colours, and for about twenty minutes it's one of the most beautiful spots in the city. Madrileños know this, which is why the grassy areas fill up from about an hour before sunset.
Practical details: The temple itself is free but requires reservation (madrid.es). The grounds are open whenever the park is open. Get there 45 minutes before sunset for a good spot. Bring something to sit on unless you enjoy grass stains.
Closed Mondays.
The Prado: Three hours of your life, well spent
There are three great art museums in Madrid — the Prado, the Reina Sofía, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza. You cannot do all three in three days and retain your sanity. Pick one, do it properly, save the others for next time.
Most people pick the Prado, and most people are right. This is one of the world's great painting collections, particularly strong in Spanish masters (Velázquez, Goya, El Greco) and Spanish-era acquisitions (Bosch, Titian, Rubens). It's overwhelming in the best possible way.
What to see if you have two hours:
- Las Meninas (Velázquez, Room 12): You know this painting even if you think you don't. It's the one where the painter painted himself painting the king and queen, who are reflected in a mirror in the back. The girl in the centre is the Infanta Margarita. There are always people standing in front of it. Join them briefly, then step to the side and watch other people react to it.
- The Garden of Earthly Delights (Bosch, Room 56A): A triptych depicting paradise, earthly pleasure, and hell, painted around 1500 by someone who had apparently seen things. You'll stand in front of it for twenty minutes noticing new bizarre details.
- The Third of May 1808 (Goya, Room 64): Goya's depiction of Napoleonic soldiers executing Spanish prisoners. Genuinely moving, even if you're resistant to being moved by art.
- Saturn Devouring His Son (Goya, Room 67): From Goya's "Black Paintings" period, when he was deaf, isolated, and painting nightmares on the walls of his house. It's exactly as disturbing as it sounds.
The museum is open Monday to Saturday 10 AM to 8 PM, Sunday and holidays until 7 PM. Entry is €15, reduced €7.50. Free entry every day during the last two hours — queues can be long, but they move quickly.
The Prado app is free and genuinely useful for navigation and information.
Parque del Retiro: Where Madrid goes to not be Madrid
Every great city needs an escape valve. Paris has the Luxembourg Gardens. London has its royal parks. Madrid has Retiro — 125 hectares of green space that, until 1868, was exclusively for the royal family's use.
Now it's where everyone goes. Runners in the morning. Families on weekends. Couples in rowboats on the artificial lake, trying to steer while looking romantic, usually failing at both. Elderly men playing chess. Teenagers doing whatever teenagers do. Dogs, so many dogs.
There's nothing you have to see here. The Palacio de Cristal is beautiful (a glass and iron pavilion built in 1887, now hosting free contemporary art exhibitions — check if it's open, it sometimes closes for installation changes). The rowboats on the Estanque Grande are fun if you don't mind spending €6-8 to paddle in circles. The rose garden is lovely in May.
But mostly, Retiro is for being rather than doing. Find a bench, sit down, watch people. This is the correct use.
Open daily, free. Summer hours 6 AM to midnight, winter until 10 PM.
La Latina and the art of the tapas crawl
If you do one thing on your last evening in Madrid, do this: go to La Latina, find Calle de la Cava Baja, and submit to the tapas crawl.
The rules are simple. Enter a bar. Order a small beer (caña) or a glass of wine or a vermouth. Order one tapa — small plate, something to eat with your drink. Eat it standing at the bar. Finish. Leave. Walk thirty metres. Repeat at the next bar.
This is how madrileños eat dinner. Not sitting at a table with a three-course menu, but moving from place to place, accumulating small plates and conversations. By the end of the evening you've eaten a full meal, visited five or six establishments, and had more fun than any restaurant could provide.
Cava Baja has over fifty bars in about 300 metres. Some are tourist traps. Most are excellent. A few reliable ones:
- Taberna Tempranillo (Cava Baja, 38): Excellent wine selection, good cheese and charcuterie.
- La Chata (Cava Baja, 24): Traditional, hand-painted tile façade, good huevos rotos.
- Los Huevos de Lucio (Cava Baja, 32): The casual sibling of famous Casa Lucio, specialising in broken eggs over ham.
- Lamiak (Cava Baja, 42): Basque pintxos, good beer, relaxed atmosphere.
- Taberna Almendro 13 (Almendro, 13): Slightly off the main street, famous for roscos (stuffed bread rings).
The best time to start: around 8:30 or 9 PM. Earlier is too quiet; later you'll struggle to get bar space.
Budget: roughly €4-6 per stop (one drink, one tapa). Four or five stops makes a meal.
A note on timing, money, and the rhythm of things
Madrid runs late. Lunch is 2-4 PM. Dinner is 9-11 PM. Bars don't really get going until 11 PM. Clubs open at midnight and close at 6 AM. Fighting this schedule is possible but exhausting — you'll find yourself eating alone in empty restaurants or arriving at bars when only the staff are there.
The siesta is mostly dead in professional Madrid, but the spirit lingers. Many small shops close from 2-5 PM. Museums stay open, but the post-lunch hours are when locals retreat indoors. If you're visiting in summer, this is wise — Madrid at 3 PM in July is aggressively hot.
As for money: Madrid is cheaper than Barcelona, much cheaper than Paris or London, about the same as Lisbon or Rome. A decent lunch menu del día runs €12-15. A caña (small beer) is €2-3. Museum entries average €10-15 with plenty of free windows. A three-day trip, done sensibly, costs €100-150 per day excluding accommodation and flights.
What you'll leave with
Not enlightenment. Not a transformed perspective on life. Madrid doesn't do that — it's too busy being itself to worry about transforming visitors.
What you'll leave with is more modest and, in a way, more valuable: the memory of a city that works. That makes sense on its own terms. That doesn't need your approval but is quietly pleased when it gets it.
You'll remember specific things — the light on the palace, the chaos of Gran Vía, the unexpected pleasure of eating fried squid from a paper napkin while standing at a zinc bar. You'll remember that dinner at 10 PM felt strange and then felt right. You'll remember the particular exhaustion of day one and the particular ease of day three.
And you'll probably think, at some point on the flight home: I'd go back.
That's the highest compliment Madrid accepts. It doesn't need more.
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