Things to Do in Madrid

The clock is the thing to plan around

Madrid runs later than almost anywhere else in Europe, and visitors who keep northern hours spend the trip eating alone. This is not a quirk to observe — it is a planning constraint that decides how each day is shaped.

1. Lunch runs roughly 2pm to 4pm, and it is the big meal of the day. The menú del día — a fixed lunch menu on weekdays — is the best value food in the city.
2. Dinner does not fill up until about 9.30pm. A restaurant with tables free at 8pm on a Friday is telling you something.
3. Bars serve tapas through the afternoon gap, which is how you bridge from lunch to a late dinner.
4. Museums close earlier than you expect, most by 8pm — so sightseeing goes before dinner, not after.

The practical version: do the museums and the old centre in daylight, take the afternoon gap slowly, and treat 9pm as the start of the evening rather than the end.

Three museums in fifteen minutes of walking

The Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza sit along the same boulevard. Together they hold the collection most people come to Madrid for, and all three open free for the last hours of the day.

1. Prado — Spanish court painting: Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Bosch. The largest of the three and the one to give a full morning.
2. Reina Sofía — twentieth-century Spain, built around Picasso’s Guernica. Free entry Monday and Wednesday to Saturday 7pm–9pm, and Sunday 12.30pm–2.30pm (checked with the museum, August 2026).
3. Thyssen-Bornemisza — a private collection filling the gaps the other two leave, from early Italian painting to Pop art. The smallest, and the easiest to do in ninety minutes.
4. Each also opens free in its final hours, but the windows differ between the three and change — check the museum’s own page on the day rather than trusting a blog.

The free hours are genuinely busy, and the queue forms before the window opens. If you only have one free evening, spend it at the Reina Sofía: Guernica is in a room of its own and the crowd moves through faster than at the Prado.

Old Madrid is small, and one market in it is a trap

The historic centre is compact enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes, which is why most itineraries do it in a single morning.

1. Plaza Mayor — the arcaded square at the centre of it. Walk through; the restaurants under the arches are priced for people who will not come back.
2. Palacio Real — the largest royal palace in western Europe by floor area, and still used for state occasions. The changing of the guard happens on set days.
3. Almudena Cathedral — next door to the palace, and unusually modern inside for a cathedral of its scale.
4. La Latina — the tapas neighbourhood south of the palace. Calle Cava Baja is the street, and Sunday afternoon after the Rastro market is when it is at its best.

Mercado de San Miguel appears on every list of things to do in Madrid. It is a beautiful iron-and-glass hall, and it is also the most expensive and most crowded place to eat in the centre. Go in, look at the building, then eat in La Latina or at Mercado de San Fernando in Lavapiés for a third of the price.

The best two hours in Madrid are free

1. Retiro Park — the old royal gardens, now the city’s back garden. The Crystal Palace at its centre is glass and iron and costs nothing to enter.
2. Templo de Debod — an Egyptian temple given to Spain in the 1960s, rebuilt on a rise west of the centre. It faces west, which is why it is the sunset spot.
3. Parque del Oeste — the park the temple sits in, and the walk down through it towards Príncipe Pío.

Debod at sunset is the most photographed spot in Madrid and it does get crowded, but the rise is wide enough that arriving twenty minutes early gets you space.

Toledo or Segovia — pick one

Both appear on every Madrid list and both are worth the journey, but doing them in the same trip means two days of trains for two half-seen cities.

If you are choosing: Toledo is the denser, older, more overwhelming of the two, and it is the one that repays a full day. Segovia is easier and more immediately photogenic. Neither works as a half day — the AVE is quick, but the walking is not.