Madrid, the tours worth your day.
Prado skip-the-line, tapas in La Latina, flamenco in a real tabláo, and the day out to Toledo. What each is like, what it costs, and where to book.
Seven bookings that make the trip.
First visit or fifth, these carry a Madrid trip: the Prado without the queue that wraps the building, a tabláo where the guitar is the point, the tapas crawl your hotel won’t send you on.
Tour Bernabéu Entry Ticket
Step into Real Madrid’s Bernabéu for a self-paced trophy museum and pitchside access, with optional souvenir photo. Skip the line.
From $41 per person
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★ 4.1Safe betPanoramic Route City TourFrom $3912,259 reviews
★ 4.5Books out fastLive Flamenco Show with Food and Drinks OptionsFrom $339,901 reviews
★ 5.0Crowd favouriteAvila & Segovia Tour with Tickets to Monuments from MadridFrom $819,762 reviews
★ 4.5Worth every euroReina Sofía Museum Entrance TicketFrom $148,788 reviews
★ 4.7Easy winSegovia and Toledo Tour, Alcazar, and CathedralFrom $487,797 reviews
★ 5.0Local favouriteToledo Tour from Madrid: Cathedral, Synagogue & St. Tome’s ChurchFrom $816,784 reviews
Castile is an hour down the line.
The fast train reaches Toledo in half an hour and Segovia in under one. Walk the walled city El Greco painted, stand under the Roman aqueduct, then still be back on the Gran Vía for dinner. This is the day a Madrid trip gets built around.
Which of the three museums?
The Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen sit within a ten-minute walk of one another: the Golden Triangle. Few travellers do all three in a day and stay sane. Pick the one that sounds like you; each tour behind it is already reviewed and priced.
Velázquez & Goya
The Prado
1 day · from $21 · 20,699 reviews
The heavyweight: Las Meninas across a whole wall, Goya’s black paintings, room after room of Spanish masters. Go with a guide who tells you where to stand, and start early: the queue wraps the building by ten.
See the Prado tours →
Picasso’s Guernica
The Reina Sofía
1 day · from $14 · 8,788 reviews
Twentieth-century Spain under one roof, and Guernica the size of a wall at the end of it. Quieter than the Prado, heavier in a different way. Best late in the day, once the coach groups have moved on.
See the Reina Sofía tours →
Eight centuries
The Thyssen
from $16 · 435 reviews
The collection that fills the gaps the other two leave, from medieval gold grounds through to Hopper and Pop, all in one palace on the Paseo del Prado. The easy one to fall for on a first visit.
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Madrid saves its best for late.
The tabláo doesn’t warm up until the second set. The tabernas in La Latina fill after midnight, the rooftops open when the heat breaks, and the last metro is only a suggestion. Someone who knows the doors is the difference between a good night and a great one.
Dinner starts at ten here.
Madrid eats late and on its feet: gildas at the bar, jamón sliced to order, the Mercado de San Miguel at its loudest around nine. If we could book only three food hours in the city, these are the three.
Vermouth is a verb here.
Saturday noon in Madrid means hacer el vermut: house vermouth on tap, an olive, nowhere to be. Add a Ribera tasting or a bodega day in the hills and you have the other half of the city’s table.
The Habsburgs still set the table.
The Habsburgs laid out the Plaza Mayor, the Bourbons gilded the Royal Palace, and both stand where they were left. Walk the Madrid de los Austrias before the cafes fill, then step inside two thousand rooms of throne halls and tapestries before the queue forms.
Madrid, sight by sight.
The centre is walkable and stacked. The Prado and the Reina Sofía a paseo apart. The Royal Palace over the hill. El Retiro for the afternoon. Plaza Mayor for when your feet give out.
Pick your kind of day.
A dozen ways into the same city: tapas and tabláos, bikes and tuk-tuks, a bullring at dusk or a ghost story after dark. Pick the one that sounds like you; everything behind it is reviewed and priced.
An hour buys you a different century.
The fast train turns Castile into an afternoon. Toledo’s three cultures, Segovia’s castle and aqueduct, Ávila’s walls, El Escorial’s monastery: each a morning out and a seat home before dark.
Three days that fit Madrid.
You won’t see all of Madrid in one trip; you can absolutely nail three days. This is the order we’d give a friend landing at Barajas tomorrow.
Day 1
Old Madrid on foot
Puerta del Sol, the Plaza Mayor arcades, the Royal Palace and the Almudena, then tapas in La Latina while the jet lag is still useful.
Plan day one →
Day 2
Art, then the park
The Prado at opening, the Reina Sofía before lunch, an afternoon adrift in El Retiro, and vermouth somewhere with a terrace as the light goes.
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Day 3
The day in Castile
The morning train to Toledo or Segovia, the walled old town, the cathedral, and a seat back to Madrid in time for one last dinner.
Plan the day trip →
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