Madrid does not open early. Plan the day around that.
Which Prado ticket skips the queue on Paseo del Prado. What the bus to Toledo really costs. Whether Segovia and Ávila fit into one day out. Reviews of every tour you can book in Madrid and the Castilian belt around it.
The Prado, the Palace, a tablao, and the bus south to Toledo.
Four bookings a first week in Madrid hangs off. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first morningPrado Museum Entry TicketA timed slot for the Prado before the coach groups. Velazquez and Goya are on the first floor; give it two hours minimum.
02Royal MadridRoyal Palace Fast-Access Admission TicketFast-access entry to the Palace. Two thousand eight hundred rooms, of which you walk about fifty, including the porcelain one.
03The evening“Emociones” Live Flamenco PerformanceA tablao show off the Gran Via. Small room, no microphones, and the guitar starts before the dancer does.
04The day southGuided Day Trip to Toledo by BusThe coach to Toledo and back inside a day. Cathedral, synagogue and the lanes in between, seventy kilometres down the A-42.
Four walled cities, all of them back in Madrid by dinner.
Madrid sits in the middle of Castile and everything historic is an hour away in some direction. Pick the direction: south to Toledo, north over the Guadarrama to Segovia, west to the walls of Avila.
Three museums on one boulevard, and the Palace at the end of it.
The Prado, the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia stand within a ten-minute walk of each other on the Paseo del Prado. Guernica is in the third one. Book entry times, not a whole day, and leave the Palace for the morning after.
Flamenco in Madrid is an import that never went home.
Andalusia invented it; Madrid built the tablaos that keep it working. The rooms are small, the sets run about an hour, and nothing worth seeing starts before ten. Book the seat, then find dinner afterwards.
The tickets more travellers take than anything else in Madrid.
Every Madrid tour we have reviewed →Stadium, gallery, palace, tablao, and the coach south. What earns each of them the slot.
1
Tour Bernabéu Entry Ticket
Explore Real Madrid’s Bernabéu Stadium with trophy galleries, changing rooms, dugouts, interactive exhibits, and panoramic city views.
From · $41
Read our review →
2
Prado Museum Entry Ticket
from $21
3
Royal Palace Fast-Access Admission Ticket
from $26
4
“Emociones” Live Flamenco Performance
from $34
5
Live Flamenco Show with Food and Drinks Options
from $33
6
Avila & Segovia Tour with Tickets to Monuments from Madrid
from $81
7
Three Cities in One Day: Segovia, Avila and Toledo from Madrid
from $126
8
Segovia and Toledo Tour, Alcazar, and Cathedral
from $48
Six starting points, three of them outside the city.
The Habsburg centre and the boulevard of galleries, then the belt: a cathedral town on a granite bend of the Tagus, a Roman aqueduct, a full circuit of medieval wall.
What a day in Madrid actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Madrid is the cheapest capital in western Europe to fill a day in, and the numbers below show it.
Gallery and palace entry, cathedral tickets down in Toledo and Segovia, walking tours, a tablao seat.
- 1Tour Bernabéu Entry Ticketfrom $41
- 2Prado Museum Entry Ticketfrom $21
- 3Royal Palace Fast-Access Admission Ticketfrom $26
The full-day coach runs into Castile, tapas crawls with the drinks in, cooking classes, guided palace mornings.
Private guides, a car and driver for the belt, balloon flights over the Segovia plain.
Three things Madrid does that nowhere else does.
Every European capital has a gallery and a stadium. A room hung with the entire output of Velazquez, a trophy case with fifteen European Cups in it, and a two-hundred-seat tablao are Madrid’s alone.
The Prado’s Velazquez rooms
Almost everything Velazquez painted for the court hangs in a single sequence of rooms, ending at Las Meninas in a space built to be looked at from the doorway he painted it from. The Goya black paintings are downstairs and best done second, when you have stopped being polite about the light.
- 1Prado Museum Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 17,509 reviews
- 2Small Group of Prado Museum Tour & Optional Tapas★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,437 reviews
- 3Prado Museum Guided Tour with Skip-the-Line Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,018 reviews
The Bernabeu, empty
The tour runs when there is no match, which is most days, and takes you down through the trophy room and out at pitch level into eighty thousand empty seats. The renovated bowl closes over the top now, so the noise a full house makes has nowhere to go.
- 1Tour Bernabéu Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 21,573 reviews
- 2Guided Tour of Bernabéu Stadium★★★★★★★★★★ 3.8 · 1,128 reviews
- 3Bernabeu Stadium & Real Madrid Museum Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 360 reviews
A Madrid tablao
A tablao is a room with a low wooden stage, forty to two hundred chairs, and no amplification worth the name. The singer goes first and is the part nobody warns you about. Sets run an hour, tables are sold with or without dinner, and the late show is the one the dancers prefer.
- 1“Emociones” Live Flamenco Performance★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 12,866 reviews
- 2Live Flamenco Show with Food and Drinks Options★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 9,901 reviews
- 3La Cueva de Lola Flamenco Show Tickets with Drink★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,567 reviews
Four Madrid bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast on the day. These four run on timed slots, match calendars and rooms too small to hold a walk-up crowd.
- 01Prado Museum Entry TicketEntry is by timed slot and the free evening window draws a queue down the whole side of the building. Pick a morning slot and book it before you land.
- 02Tour Bernabéu Entry TicketThe stadium tour shuts on match days and often the day before one. Check the fixture list first, then buy for a day the team is away.
- 03Royal Palace Fast-Access Admission TicketThe Palace is a working state building and closes at short notice for official ceremonies. A dated ticket is the only way to know you are getting in.
- 04“Emociones” Live Flamenco PerformanceA tablao seats between forty and two hundred people. The good rooms sell the late show out days ahead, and the front tables go first.
Forty degrees at four in the afternoon, and half the city away.
Madrid sits on a plateau at 650 metres with no sea anywhere near it, and July and August behave accordingly. Locals leave, plenty of the small places shut for the month, and the middle of the day is unusable outdoors. The answer is the same one Madrid has always used: galleries and cool rooms until seven, then the city comes back out.
- 1Prado Museum Entry Ticketfrom $21
- 2Reina Sofía Museum Entrance Ticketfrom $14
- 3Small Group of Prado Museum Tour & Optional Tapasfrom $53
By place — the city, then the belt
By kind of day — gallery, table, stage or road
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