Madrid: 7 Sites Not To Be Missed


Everyone finds something in Madrid, but strangely enough it is rarely what he or she is looking for, as the Spanish say "Mucha marcha", it literarily means “it marches”, but it is taken to mean a city that never sleeps!

Madrid the capital of modern day Spain nestling in the heart of the Iberian Peninsula captures the imagination of everyone who sees it. Mohamed I (852-886) ordered the first buildings to be built and Moor and Christians fought for the area for centuries until Alonso VI claimed victory for the Christians in 1085. Today this beautiful leafy gracious city is often overlooked in favour of the beach. This is a tragedy as Madrid is a thriving cosmopolitan centre with its own inimitable attractions.

Many visitors who know the city well tend to think the Spaniards want to keep it for themselves, as even the tourist authorities tend to refer to it as a traveling hub. A Norwegian dignitary once remarked that the City has more pubs than the entire country of Norway. Yet it has so much more to offer than the airport and railway station, and a thriving nightlife, it offers the weekend tourist a perfect destination whether it be romantic, whimsical or amusing. It has become very popular in recent years for stag and hen nights. Tim Parfitt has recently published his memoirs of living in the city “A Load of Bull” offers an amusing glimpse of life in a foreign capital and makes excellent reading on the airplane over to Madrid to get you in the mood.

By Spanish standards Madrid is a modern City, it is not steeped in history as are the Castilian town, but despite this it has charms of its own that are strictly Madridlean. The Gran Via is a shopaholics’ paradise. Madrid is a city of surprises it has the second largest fish market in the world, second only to Tokyo. Even the casual visitor to Spain, has to have noticed, the wonderful nightlife that Spain offers.

There are cinemas, theatres, clubs, pubs, circuses, restaurants, floorshows, ballet, opera and discotheques all offering fun and excitement. Madrid’s nightlife is second to none and the locals are known as “Los Gatos”, as they are still carousing until the early hours of the morning like cats. Madrid offers everything from paintball to running the bulls.

Madrid is high on a plateau and has long hot summers but cool winters. Anisado de Chinchón, or anisette schnapps, is a fitting local tribute to have on the way home after a winter night out, it will warm the cockles of anyone’s heart.

1. The Golden Triangle of Art galleries

Madrid as befits any capital city is host to many art galleries, but its three most famous are known collectively as the Golden Triangle.

The EL Prado Museum

This houses an internationally famous collection over 8600 paintings by world masters. Once the collection belonged to the monarchy but inheritance problems and the dissolution of the monarchy in Franco’s time meant that the historical and eclectic treasures belong to the nation. Although the collection of paintings drawings and sculptors are housed in two buildings many are kept in storage as a result of lack of space.

During the Civil war the ownership of the art collection had been challenged, and for part of the war the collection was in Geneva; it was not finally returned to Spain until after the Second World War. For anyone interested in religious art the El Prado houses a finer collection in storage than most other museums have in their lobbies. Goya, Velasquez Murillo, Hieronymus Bosch, Rubens, Botticelli, Mantegna, Titian, and Rembrandt’s are all housed on its walls. Even if you have no interest in paintings, the El Prado is one of the most beautiful and imposing buildings in Madrid. It was originally built to house the Natural; history Museum and was also used as an arsenal during the Napoleonic Wars.

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

To say the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (1921-2002) had a chequered history is rather an understatement he was an industrialist of the Thyssen family's who owned the German steel and armaments factories, he was born in Holland, a Swiss citizen, but a legal resident of Monaco, owning a Hungarian title from his father, who had declared the UK to be his second home. In case you have lost me here, he lived in Spain for much of his later years and his fifth and final wife Carmen Cervera, a former Miss Spain. Nevertheless the vagaries of his character are not in any way reflected in his art collection.

Since 1992 more than 800 of his private paintings, carvings and sculptors have been on display in Madrid. Many of the paintings in the El Prado are classical; the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía National Museum displays many modern eclectic pieces. This extraordinary collection manages to cover the void between the two extremes. The nineteenth century American art, the Dutch primitives and the Teutonic paintings and the abstract paintings in this collection give Madrid an unrivalled position of having on public show some of the best and most complete art collections in Europe.

Centro de Arte Reina Sofía National Museum

Named after the present Queen Of Spain this modern art gallery has many important pieces not least of which is “Guernica” by Picasso, it depicts the Nazis bombing the Spanish town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. There has much philosophical work written about this painting but much if it ignores the concealed imagery in the painting. However we are never likely to know the truth of why Pablo Ruiz Picasso concealed the face of Hitler in the painting as he spoke little about it and took the secret of the meaning of the painting to the grave.

2. Royal Palaces of Madrid.

The Palacio Real, or the Palacio de Oriente, the Palace of the Orient is open to the public and is the old Royal Palace situated in the West of Madrid. Franco made it one of his favourite places to stand in front of when making his patriotic speeches. Whilst the Royal family has chosen not to live there it is still officially their residence and used for state occasions. When the monarchy was reinstated In Spain after General Franco’s death in 1975, King Juan Carlos and his family chose to reside at the smaller Palacio de la Zarzuela, set in beautiful parkland on the outskirts of Madrid.

The Palacio Real is the largest palace In Western Europe and houses some of the most important art collections in the world. It has the only surviving complete Stradivarius string quintet, which is of course pricelss. The Palace garden the Campo del Moro is renowned to be one of the most beautiful in a city of fabulous gardens. The Plaza de Oriente is the square at the Eastern side of the Palace it was begun whilst Napoleon was Emperor and the Frenc wanted to construct a Madrilean Champs Elysées, but the project was halted by the defeat of Napoleon.

3. Puerto Del Sol & Gran Vía

Plaza Sol is the most famous Square in Madrid and because of its distinctive semi circular shape it stands out to be an ideal meeting place. The statue of a bear, which is the symbol of Madrid, is here in this Square. All the streets loading off this lead to shops bars restaurants. Just a few minutes away is the imposing Plaza Mayor which was home to all the bull fights the great carnivals and street festivities of Imperial Madrid. Much of it was destroyed by fire in 1790 and it has been rebuilt. Should you stop and have a coffee now when you come to pay for it, it will feel as though you have personally financed the complete construction!

4. Museo de América

The Americas to the Spanish means South and Central America, rather than the more normal North. The contents of this museum would be regarded as priceless anywhere in the world it houses the premier collection of pre-Columbian art and artifacts in the whole of Europe. It contains articles that were brought back by the Spanish conquistadors as well as more modern artifacts that were donated by various Latin American countries. There are Inca stone sculptures and funeral offerings from Peru, fantastic gold ornaments and figurines from Colombia, Aztec masks and a priceless Mayan illustrated manuscript from Mexico telling the story of the arrival of the Spaniards. Much of what is available here to be seen has never left Madrid since the museum was opened and the exhibits are truly remarkable.

5. Museo Arqueológico Nacional

One of the main reasons for visiting the National archaeological museum is the replica of the prehistoric Altamira cave in Santander. The Altamira cave in Santander was a prehistoric cave, now a World heritage site for which you have to wait at least a year to visit it and only with a permit, which is not necessarily granted. Even this replica is one of the most popular tourist sites in Madrid. Despite the fact that this original site is not famous in Britain it is one of the most important sites of prehistoric cave paintings in the world. In the original cave the paintings are over 14,000 years old, they are red ochre and edged in black. These paintings of bison have been painstakingly reproduced in the museum and there is a lecture as to how the technique was developed.

6. The Buen Retiro Park

Originally the gardens of the Royal Palace this enormous 350-acre park was once outside the city, but nowadays it is completely within the cities parameter, not far from the El Prado museum. The majority of the Palace was destroyed during the Napoleonic wars and the Park was eventually opened to the public a hundred and fifty years ago. There are a few remaining buildings within the park including the mausoleum of Alfonso XII, and a crystal palace modeled on the Crystal pavilion in London built during the great exhibition. Interestingly enough the park houses the “El Angel Caído”; the fallen angel, the only statue dedicated to Lucifer in the world.

7. El Teleférico de Madrid

This is a cable car that runs from the district of Rosales in the west of the city to a restaurant in the Casa de Campo Park. The 10-minute ride gives great views of Madrid's skyline.