Madrid is Spain's high, sunlit capital, a city that lives outdoors and stays up late. It does not seduce you with a single skyline-defining monument the way some capitals do; instead it wins you over with a thousand small pleasures, a Velazquez at the Prado before lunch, a cana and a free tapa at a marble-topped bar, a sunset behind a real Egyptian temple, and a dinner that rarely starts before ten. A frontier town for centuries and a capital only since 1561, Madrid carries the museums and palaces of an imperial city with the warmth of an overgrown village, and it knows how to enjoy itself better than almost anywhere in Europe.
This guide is built around how the city actually fits together. The monumental core, Madrid de los Austrias, is the Habsburg old town around the arcaded Plaza Mayor, the vast Royal Palace, and the gourmet Mercado de San Miguel. South and west, La Latina is the land of historic tabernas and the Sunday El Rastro flea market, while multicultural Lavapies next door is street-art-covered and full of life. North of Gran Via, bohemian Malasana and rainbow-flagged Chueca hold the best bars, vintage shops, and late nights. To the east run the Paseo del Prado and the green lung of El Retiro, together a UNESCO World Heritage 'Landscape of Light'; beyond them stretches the grand, moneyed grid of Salamanca.
Two things define a Madrid trip. The first is art: the Golden Triangle of the Prado, the Reina Sofia (home to Picasso's Guernica), and the Thyssen-Bornemisza forms one of the densest concentrations of masterpieces on earth, and much of it is free in the early evening. The second is the street: Madrid's real life happens in its plazas, on its terraces, and at its bar counters, over vermouth at noon, churros at dawn, and the slow ritual of drifting from one tapas counter to the next.
