4 Days in Madrid

A day-by-day itinerary for Madrid, Spain: real activities, restaurants and hotels with prices and booking links. Copy it and make it yours.

Madrid, Spain · 4 days · 17 activities · free to copy and customize

Day 1 — Plaza to plaza

13:30 Cercanías from Barajas (MAD) (€3). ≈€2.60, 25 min to Atocha/Sol. The metro works too (€5 with airport supplement).
15:00 Hotel near Plaza Santa Ana, 3 nights (€450). ≈€150/night in the Letras quarter — tapas country on foot, both big museums 10 minutes away.
17:00 Puerta del Sol → Plaza Mayor loop. Free. Kilometre Zero, the bear and the strawberry tree, and the arcaded square that has hosted everything from markets to coronations.
20:30 First tapas crawl on Cava Baja (€30). ≈€30. One drink + one tapa per bar, keep moving — the street is a conveyor of good decisions. Dinner before 21:00 marks you as a tourist; embrace it or adapt.

10:00 Museo del Prado (€15). €15 — or FREE the last two hours (18:00–20:00 Mon–Sat). Pay for the morning: Las Meninas, Goya's black paintings and Bosch's Garden deserve better than a closing-time jog.
13:30 Menú del día near the museum (€16). ≈€14–18 for three courses and wine — Spain's greatest lunchtime institution.
15:30 Retiro Park & the Crystal Palace. Free. Row a boat on the pond (€6) or just drift to the Palacio de Cristal like everyone else.
18:30 Reina Sofía for Guernica (€12). €12 — also free evenings (19:00–21:00 Mon/Wed–Sat). Guernica needs twenty unhurried minutes; the preparatory sketches around it double the impact.
21:30 Dinner in Lavapiés (€25). Madrid's most mixed barrio — from vermut bars to Senegalese thieboudienne on one street.

09:30 Royal Palace (€12). €12, book online. Europe's largest functioning royal palace by floor area — the armoury and the frescoed staircase are the highlights.
11:30 Almudena Cathedral & Sabatini Gardens. Free (cathedral donation). The gardens frame the palace for the photo.
13:30 Mercado de Antón Martín (€20). ≈€20. Where madrileños actually shop and lunch — San Miguel is prettier and triple the price for the same croquetas.
16:00 Gran Vía & Malasaña wander. Free. Broadway-Baroque facades, then the barrio that invented la movida.
20:45 Templo de Debod at sunset. Free. An actual 2nd-century-BC Egyptian temple, gifted in 1968, silhouetted against the Casa de Campo sun. Arrive 30 min early for a ledge spot.

10:00 El Rastro flea market (Sundays) or the Sorolla Museum. Rastro free (watch pockets); if it's not Sunday, the Sorolla house-museum (€3) is Madrid's quiet masterpiece. Toledo is also a 33-minute train away — see our separate Toledo day-trip itinerary if you can stretch a day.
12:30 Chocolate con churros at San Ginés (€6). ≈€6. Open since 1894 and at 3 a.m. after clubs; late morning is the civilised sitting.
14:30 Cercanías back to Barajas (€3). Allow the usual 3 hours before departure.

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