All our Neighborhoods guides for Madrid, in one place.
A century old livestock market and abattoir on the Manzanares turned into theatre, galleries, a design centre and a food hall, and why Arganzuela is worth the walk south of the centre.
A neighborhood-by-neighborhood guide to where to stay in Madrid: Sol and the center, Huertas, Chueca and Malasaña, Salamanca, La Latina and more, plus hotels, hostales and apartments, and who each area suits.
No canals, no cathedral square with a violinist. What Madrid has instead is an Egyptian temple at sunset, a rowing boat, a glasshouse and dinner at eleven.
In mid May the city puts on waistcoats and headscarves, dances the chotis in a meadow and eats wafer rolls. Then it does something similar four more times a year.
Flamenco is Andalusian, and Madrid is where it professionalised. How to tell a serious tablao from a dinner show, and what you are actually watching.
A two hour walk from an avenue built in 1910 by demolishing fourteen streets, down into the tangle of alleys the demolition was meant to replace.
A night here has stages: vermouth, tapas, a proper drink, a rooftop, a club at two and churros at six. Where each stage happens and how to pace it.
Everything a first-time visitor needs for Madrid: when to go, which neighborhood to stay in, what to book ahead, how to get around, what to eat and the rookie mistakes to skip.
One was the centre of a counterculture and is now full of vintage shops and coffee; the other was derelict and became one of Europe's great gay districts. They share a street.
A medieval street grid south of the palace, a hundred bars in twenty minutes' walk, and a Sunday ritual that starts at the flea market and finishes after dark.
A flat city with a wall of sierra behind it looks better from the ninth floor: which rooftop bars are worth the price, and which viewpoints cost nothing at all.