Madrid holds more masterpiece-per-square-metre than any capital in Europe, but its culture also lives in tiled taverns, tenement patios and 19th-century theatres. Three days: the Paseo del Arte, the performing arts, then the neighbourhood art scene.
The private collection that fills the Prado's gaps: Duccio to Rothko in one chronological descent from the second floor down. Villahermosa Palace, salmon-pink walls chosen by Baroness Carmen. Open 10:00–19:00, Mondays 12:00–16:00 free.
Spain's widest dome at 33 metres, wider than St Paul's, finished 1784. Goya painted the San Bernardino de Siena chapel in 1784 and put his own face in it, staring out in yellow stockings. Guided visits only, 10:30–12:30 and 16:00–18:00.
A marquis's 1893 palace frozen at his death: 50,000 objects hung floor-to-ceiling by his own instructions, El Greco's Ecstasy of Saint Francis among them. The mirrored ballroom with Máximo Juderías ceiling is the finest 19th-century interior in Madrid.
Antonio Palacios's 1926 art-deco tower, a private arts club since 1880 with exhibition halls, a cinema and a marble-columned café. The seventh-floor roof terrace frames Metrópolis, Gran Vía and the Sierra de Guadarrama beyond.
Guernica hangs unglazed in room 205.10 with Dora Maar's progress photographs alongside. Also the deepest Dalí and Miró holdings in Spain, in an 18th-century hospital with Ian Ritchie's glass lifts bolted to the façade.
Free museum inside the national library's neoclassical bulk: a facsimile Cantar de Mio Cid, Nebrija's 1492 grammar, early Cervantes editions and a reconstruction of a medieval scriptorium. Tuesday–Saturday 10:00–20:00.
Goya was its director; thirteen of his canvases hang here, including the Burial of the Sardine and his self-portrait of 1815. Also Zurbarán, Arcimboldo's Spring and the plaster casts students have drawn from since 1752.
Built in 1856 on La Scala's horseshoe plan, the only house in the world dedicated to zarzuela — Spanish operetta with spoken dialogue, often set in Madrid's own streets. Season runs September to July, curtain usually 20:00.
The 1776 palace of the Marqués de Matallana furnished exactly as a liberal bourgeois family lived in the 1830s: Goya's San Gregorio in the chapel, Larra's duelling pistol, a Pleyel piano still tuned. Tue–Sat 09:30–18:30.
A 1790 tobacco factory turned state exhibition space and self-managed social centre. The free galleries show large-format photography; the courtyard walls are a permanent, repainted mural gallery of Madrid street artists.
Five floors of Spanish domestic craft behind the Retiro: Talavera ceramics, Manila shawls, and on the fourth floor a complete 18th-century Valencian tiled kitchen moved here wall by wall — 1,600 azulejos of servants at work.
Opened 1956, the oldest flamenco tablao still running and where Antonio Gades and Blanca del Rey performed. A 120-seat room, two shows nightly, no amplification — the cajón and the heels carry unaided.