Madrid Tourism Guide is an independent reference site about visiting Madrid. It exists because most of what turns up when you search for a Madrid opening time, a Metro fare or the cost of a day trip to Toledo is either an aggregator repeating a figure from three years ago, or a listicle that never names where its numbers came from. This site tries to be the version you can act on.
What is here
Around 140 guides, organised into fifteen sections: things to do, where to stay, food and drink, museums and art, day trips, neighbourhoods, getting around, nightlife, travel budget, Madrid with kids, shopping, itineraries, history and architecture, festivals and events, and parks and outdoors.
The sections are built around the questions people actually ask before a trip. How many days do I need. Is the Paseo del Arte pass worth it if I only want the Prado. Can I get to Segovia and back in a day without a car. What does a menú del día actually cost in 2026, as opposed to what a guidebook printed in 2019 says it costs. Most guides answer one of those and link out to the others rather than repeating them.
How the research works
Everything factual on this site is traced back to a primary source, and the guides link to those sources so you can check them yourself:
- Opening hours, closing days and admission prices come from the venue. The Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza publish their own ticket pages; the Royal Palace, El Escorial and the Palacio Real de Aranjuez come from Patrimonio Nacional, which runs them.
- Transport fares and timetables come from the operators. Metro de Madrid and EMT for the city, the Consorcio Regional de Transportes for zone boundaries and the Abono Turístico, and Renfe for Cercanías and long-distance trains.
- Events, festivals and public holidays are checked against esmadrid.com, the city tourism board’s own site, and the Comunidad de Madrid calendar. San Isidro, the Verbena de la Paloma and the December bank holidays move the city around enough to change what a trip is worth doing.
- Restaurant and bar prices are the softest numbers here, and are treated that way — given as ranges, dated, and flagged as the sort of thing that drifts.
Where a claim is contested or has changed recently, the guide says so rather than picking a number and asserting it. Where something is a judgement rather than a fact — whether Malasaña or Chueca suits a particular kind of trip — it is written as a judgement.
What gets rechecked, and why
Two categories of information go stale fast and cause the most wasted time on the ground: prices and opening hours. Madrid’s museums adjust admission most often in the winter; the free-entry windows in the evening are the detail most commonly reported wrong elsewhere, because they change and the copies do not. Transport fares change on their own schedule. Those numbers are re-verified against the operator or venue rather than against other travel sites, and the guides carry the year the figure applies to.
Restaurant recommendations are the other thing that decays — places close, change hands, or stop doing the thing they were recommended for. Reports that something has closed are acted on quickly.
What this site does not do
There are no paid placements. No hotel, restaurant, tour operator or attraction can buy a mention, a position in a list, or a favourable line, and none has been asked to. Nothing here is a rewritten press release.
This site does not sell anything, take bookings, or act as a travel agency. Where a guide links to a booking platform or a venue’s own ticket page, it is because that is where you buy the thing, not because of any arrangement.
The site is funded by advertising. Advertising is bought against the site as a whole and has no bearing on what is recommended or how it is ranked; advertisers do not see articles before publication and cannot request changes.
Photography
Photographs are licensed from Pexels and Wikimedia Commons under licences that permit reuse, and are credited to the photographer where the licence requires it. Images are chosen to show the place being written about — not a generic stock shot of somewhere that could be any European capital.
Corrections
Guides on this site are wrong sometimes. A price changes, a museum reorganises its free hours, a bar shuts. Corrections are welcome and are the single most useful thing a reader can send: if you have been somewhere recently and found the page out of date, say so on the contact page and name the page and the detail. Corrections that check out are made and the page is re-dated.
Who publishes this
Madrid Tourism Guide is an independently run publication. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, the Comunidad de Madrid, esmadrid.com, Turespaña, or any museum, transport operator or business named on the site. Where those organisations are cited, it is as sources.
Editorial questions, corrections and press enquiries all go through the contact page.