This half-day tour of the highlights of central Madrid takes you to two places on every traveler’s Madrid bucket list: the Royal Palace and Prado Museum. You’ll start with a guided visit to the Royal Palace. Then you’ll stroll through Madrid’s historic neighborhoods and enjoy a coffee and churros with chocolate. End with a guided highlights tour of the Prado Museum featuring Velazquez’s world-famous painting, “Las Meninas.”
Madrid is packed with art, architecture and culture, and on this half day tour, you’ll experience the best of it with an expert local guide. Your day starts when you skip the line and enter the heart-stopping Royal Palace to explore an incredible collection of paintings and textiles in each room. On your guided visit of the world's largest in-use royal palace, you'll see the palace's impressive chapel, the king's and queen's dressing rooms, the throne room—where bureaucrats are still received by the king and queen today—and more.
Leaving the palace, you’ll walk the medieval streets of central Madrid, stopping at famous landmarks like the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol as your guide tells your story of how the city went from an outpost of a crumbling Moorish empire to the preeminent Catholic power in Europe. Next, you’ll pause for coffee and churros with chocolate.
After this mid-morning snack, you’ll be ready to continue exploring the streets of Madrid as you stroll towards the Prado art museum, home to one of the greatest collections of European art in the world. You’ll enter with skip-the-line tickets and enjoy a full tour of the museum’s highlights, including works by Goya, Velazquez, El Greco, Bosch, Tintoretto and more. Your guide will tell you the stories behind the art and help you understand what makes each piece so celebrated.
Your tour ends in the museum. You can either spend more time enjoying the art or get recommendations for what to see, do and eat from your guide before heading off, safe in the knowledge that you have experienced the very best of the city in a single day.
Sites Visited:
- Palacio Real (guided inside)
Prado Museum (guided inside)
Plaza de la Villa
Plaza Mayor
Puerta del Sol
Literary Quarter
Guide: English