Madrid

💡 About Madrid

Madrid, perched at 667 metres above sea level on the high Castilian plateau — making it the highest capital city in the European Union — became Spain's political capital in 1561 when King Philip II chose it as the seat of his vast empire on the grounds that its central position in the Iberian Peninsula made it equally inconvenient to reach from all directions, a logic that still strikes visitors arriving by high-speed train from the coasts as entirely sound. The Prado Museum, which has housed the Spanish royal collection of paintings since it opened to the public in 1819, is one of the great art museums of the world: its collection of over 8,000 paintings includes the largest collection of works by Goya anywhere, with his harrowing "Black Paintings" (including Saturn Devouring His Son) occupying their own gallery; the greatest Velázquez paintings, including Las Meninas (widely regarded as one of the most complex and fascinating paintings ever made); the masterpieces of El Greco, Zurbarán and Murillo; and significant collections of Rubens, Bosch and Titian — an embarrassment of riches concentrated in a building of neoclassical solemnity on the Paseo del Prado. The "Golden Triangle of Art" — the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofía (which houses Picasso's Guernica, the 20th century's most powerful political painting) — makes a walk along the Paseo del Prado one of the most extraordinary art experiences available anywhere in the world, covering the full sweep of Western European art from the 12th century to the present.

Madrid's food culture is organised around a rhythm of life that startles visitors from northern Europe: lunch, the main meal of the day, is eaten between 2pm and 4pm; tapas are consumed standing at bars between 8pm and 10pm; dinner is served from 10pm to midnight; and the nightlife — which fills the streets of Malasaña, Lavapiés and Chueca with people of all ages — continues until dawn, after which madrileños consume churros with hot chocolate at 24-hour churrerías before going home to sleep. The Retiro Park, 125 hectares of formal gardens, wooded pathways, fountains and sculptures that were part of the royal palace complex until 1868, when they were opened to the public, serves as Madrid's principal outdoor living room: on Sunday mornings its paths fill with families, joggers, rollerbladers, street musicians and elderly men playing cards, while rowing boats navigate the artificial lake and the Palacio de Cristal (a stunning Victorian glass pavilion) hosts contemporary art exhibitions. Real Madrid, founded in 1902, is the most successful football club in the history of the UEFA Champions League, having won the competition 14 times; its rivalry with Barcelona — El Clásico — is one of the most watched sporting events in the world, drawing audiences of over 650 million viewers, and the two matches each season take on political as well as sporting significance, reflecting the historical tensions between Castilian Spain and Catalonia.

The Rastro, Madrid's enormous open-air flea market held every Sunday morning in the La Latina neighbourhood, stretches across dozens of streets and hundreds of stalls selling everything from vintage clothing to antique furniture, old books, rare coins and handmade crafts — a tradition that has been part of Madrileño Sunday life since the late 16th century. Madrid's Puerta del Sol, the symbolic zero-kilometre point of the Spanish road network from which all distances in Spain are measured, was the site of the 15-M (Indignados) protests in 2011 that inspired the Occupy movements around the world and has been the gathering point for Spanish collective life — celebrations of football victories, political demonstrations, New Year countdown — for centuries.

⭐ Known For