The Madrid 5 Day Itinerary That Let’s You See it All
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Madrid is not only the capital of Spain, but it's also one of the most enjoyable cities in Europe. There are a few cities where you can spend only two or three days and feel like you've seen everything, but Madrid is definitely not one of them. The 5 day Madrid itinerary that I created for my trip allowed me to see most of the big attractions, take some amazing tours, and even left time to explore on our own. A trip to this city is best done over several days so that you can enjoy all it has to offer without feeling rushed, so don’t try to cram in too much in your Madrid itinerary.
How Many Days Do You Need in Madrid?
● Three days is enough to see the top five tourist attractions in Madrid and get a taste for what it has to offer, but I would highly recommend visiting for longer.
● Five days would be a good length of time to visit Madrid. This gives you enough time to see top attractions, hidden gems, one or two nearby towns, and to get a feel for the culture and overall way of life.
When is the Best Time to Visit Madrid?
Madrid is a great city to visit at any time of year, but spring and fall are definitely the best times to go. April, May, September, and October are ideal for Madrid visitors because they're warm enough for outdoor activities without being hot enough to feel like you're melting. The Summer months are always peak season so expect longer lines to most attractions and fully booked tours. I typically try to visit places during their off-season to avoid crowds and October was the perfect time to visit Madrid. Most of the tours weren’t full and we didn’t experience long lines for any attractions.
The summer months in Spain are hot and humid--usually around 86 degrees Fahrenheit with 80% humidity--so Madrid can be uncomfortable at times during these months but feels like much of the United States during the heat of the Summer. Winter temperatures hover around 50-59 degrees Fahrenheit so bring layers and heavier clothes if you plan on visiting then. I visited in October, and I couldn’t have asked for better weather. Some days were sunny and 70 degrees with no humidity, while others were slightly cooler but comfortable in the 60s. The temperature would drop at night and stay in the low-mid 50s, but it was easy to carry a light sweater or jacket with us for after dinner.
August is also known as "Fiesta del Verano" or "Summer Festival Month" in Spain; this means that most businesses close for vacation between July 23rd through August 14th each year. If possible, avoid visiting Madrid during this time because many attractions will be closed until after Labor Day weekend on September 2nd when they reopen again after having been closed since early July, so keep this in mind while planning your trip to Spain in the late summer months.
5 Days in Madrid Itinerary Overview
You can easily see many of Madrid's main attractions in five days and the itinerary below is a great way to do it - and it’s also exactly how I spent my time in this beautiful city! To my surprise, I was happy to discover that Madrid has quite a few very affordable things to do that range in interest so I was sure to include some of those in my Madrid itinerary. You can also get to Madrid from Barcelona in under 3 hours by taking the train, making Madrid the perfect add-on to your trip.
● Day 1: Start with a walking tour of the city center, then wander back from the Royal Palace to Plaza Mayor. Spend the evening learning how to cook traditional Spanish food in a small-group cooking class.
● Day 2: Spend your second day getting acclimated to the time change with an all-day tour to Avila and Segovia.
● Day 3: Wake up with fresh churros and take a stroll in Retiro Park. Meet for a small-group tapas tour around lunchtime and taste your way through Madrid’s literary neighborhood, and later end your day with drinks at a Flamenco Show!
● Day 4: Ride the hop-on-hop-off bus around the entire city of Madrid stopping at top sites such as Las Ventas Bullring, the Royal Palace, the Temple of Debod, and Catedral de la Almudena. Make sure to go inside the palace, it’s gorgeous. Have a late lunch in Parque del Oeste before taking a ride on Madrid’s cable car over Parque Casa de Campo.
● Day 5: Slow down and explore the older part of town. Stop in shops that have been operating for over 125 years and try different types of small plates at San Miguel Market. End your day with an evening tapas tour in a different part of the city to taste as much traditional cuisine as you can!
Day 1 - A Free Walking Tour & A Cooking Class
On your first day in Madrid, you might be a little jet-lagged depending where you’re visiting from so you don’t want to overdo it on your first day. After checking into your hotel and dropping your luggage off, head towards the heart of the city to Plaza Mayor. When I’m visiting a new city, the first thing I do is look to see if Sandeman's offers a free walking tour. Yes, they’re free and they’re truly amazing! The free tours rely on tips and are highly encouraged at the end, but the tours are extremely informative and will help you get acquainted with the lay of the land. You can book a free tour online and browse the other tour options that are not free. The guides live locally and share interesting facts, history, and provide personal recommendations. The original Madrid free walking tour begins at Plaza Mayor and works its way towards the Royal Palace.
Afterward, head over to the Chueca neighborhood for a hands-on cooking class! A Punto is a small cooking school that offers cooking classes where you’ll learn how to cook and create ten different traditional tapas. We had so much fun in this cooking class and it was definitely worth it and would highly recommend! We were greeted with aprons and homemade sangria and then chose our area of the workstation. The class allows no more than 15 people so you can really be hands-on, participate, and learn. Some of my favorite dishes we made during the class were cold tomato soup, Idiazabal lollipops, Pil Pil cod fish, scallops, and calamari! Each person is assigned a task during class which makes it even more fun and everyone gets to contribute. After all of the dishes are prepared, they are set up together in one area and everyone digs in!
After the cooking class, we went to nearby Mercado San Antón. There are many food markets sprinkled throughout Madrid, but you can find an outdoor rooftop terrace bar on the third floor of Mercado San Antón called 11 Knots North Terrace and it’s a great hidden gem for an evening drink as the sun sets. They have fun cocktails and the tapa of choice that’s served with any drink order is sour gummy worms!
Day 2 - Day Trip to Avila and Segovia
I wanted to take day two a little slower since we were still adjusting to the time change, so I booked us a full-day guided tour to the famous countryside towns Avila and Segovia. You can opt to visit these two towns on your own and take the train from Madrid. The train from Madrid to Avila is only about an hour and the train from Madrid to Segovia is an hour and 45 minutes. If exploring on your own isn’t your thing, the guided day tour is a fantastic option!
The tour departs from Madrid’s city center around 8am and the first stop is a coffee shop right outside the city walls of Avila. Here, you can grab a bite to eat, use the restroom, and stretch your legs at a scenic viewpoint overlooking the town of Avila, one of the best preserved fortifications in Spain. Avila is a medieval town that is fully surrounded by ancient walls that are surprisingly almost perfectly still intact. This UNESCO World Heritage Site was once home to Saint Teresa de Jesús and is where Spain’s first Gothic cathedral stands. During the guided tour, you’ll learn the history of the city, go inside the cathedral, monastery, and walk through the cobblestone streets. There is an optional lunch add-on with your tour ticket at a popular restaurant in Avila called Tres Siglos, which we added and enjoyed. After lunch, you’ll have about 30-minutes of free time before you need to be back on the bus, so if you want to walk a portion of the medieval wall that surrounds the city, now would be the time to do that. The only downside of being on the tour is that you’re not left with much time on your own to explore the town further, but you do see and go inside most of the major sites in town.
The second and final stop of the day is Segovia, located about an hour away from Avila. This city is home to one of Spain's most beautiful castles and aqueducts! Segovia is a charming town full of winding streets, gardens, courtyards, squares, and beautiful architecture. The Alcazar is one of the most popular sites to visit in Segovia was built by the Moors in the 11th century and later became part of the royal palace when Ferdinand III conquered the city in 1248. You can visit both inside and out during your time there, and if you’re up for it, you can even climb the 152 steps of the spiral staircase in the Tower of Juan II. The entrance to Alcazar is included in the guided day tour, but if you’re looking at other tour options that leave from Madrid, make sure to read the details as some tours do not include the entrance to Alcazar. It’s said that this stunning castle was what inspired the creators at Disney when they were designing Snow White’s castle - so it’s definitely something you don’t want to miss! The other main attraction in Segovia is the Aqueduct which dates back to the second half of the first century and is impressive to say the least! The Aqueduct is constructed of over 20,000 stone blocks with no mortar or cement in between them and it still stands in perfect condition to this day! There are 167 arches and is truly a masterpiece to be seen. You can view the Aqueduct from the ground, and you can also walk up the stairs off to the side to see the construction from a different angle. The tour concludes with another 30–45-minute break before boarding the bus and heading back to Madrid.
Day 3 - Lunchtime Tapas and A Flamenco Show
Start day three with breakfast at Chocolatería San Ginés, where you can try a Madrid specialty, churros with hot chocolate! This chocolateria opened its doors in 1894 and has become a city staple ever since. Churros and chocolate aren’t just for breakfast either, people eat them at any time of day and are a tasty late-night treat as well! The hot chocolate served with the churros is not your typical hot chocolate drink, instead it’s a thick, creamy, homemade chocolate similar to a sauce that you can dip your churros in and some locals even drink it!
After breakfast, head over to El Retiro Park, one of Madrid's largest parks and home to many attractions such as the Palacio de Cristal (Crystal Palace) and Botanical Garden.El Retiro Park spans over 300-acres and has 15,000 trees. It’s the perfect place to spend exploring on a nice, sunny day; they have plenty of benches and green spaces that are great for a picnic, walking trails, and ponds where you can paddle boat.
Spend lunch taking part in a midday tapas tour that will show you some of Spain's most famous tapas bars in the Barrio de las Letras neighborhood while giving insight into local culture and history along the way! This was my first tapas tour, and it was better than I could have imagined! Our small group tour lasted 3 hours and there were only four participants in total including myself and my mom. Throughout the tour we tasted a variety of traditional Spanish dishes including garlic shrimp, croquetas, tripe, lemon shark, pig ears, suckling pig, and more! I’ll be completely honest, some dishes were foods I never thought I’d try, but they were surprisingly quite delicious, so I encourage you to try them all as well!
Later that evening we attended a Flamenco Show at the historical Torres Bermejas tablao. This is something we were so excited to see and I highly recommend booking your ticket as early as possible as these shows fill up quickly. Most theaters have viewing options that include drinks only, small tapas, or you can opt for a full meal while enjoying the show. We chose the drinks only option and opted to get a light dinner near our hotel afterwards since we ate so much during the tapas tour. The show itself was amazing! The dancers are so talented and passionate and after a short while you’ll become immersed in the passion and story of Flamenco!
Before calling it a night, we stopped in Casa Varona, which was located right near our hotel, Room Mate Alba. We had a couple of glasses of local regional wine and a really good platter of meat and cheese. Spain is known for their ham so be prepared to eat varieties of ham at every meal, but I promise, it’s the best ham you’ve ever had, and you won’t get tired of it!
Day 4 - Visit Madrid’s Top Sites
This day was all about seeing the top sights in Madrid and although we couldn’t see everything, I really enjoyed visiting the ones that we did! We began the day with breakfast at our hotel then walked to Puerto del Sol to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus. Some people cringe at the sight of these, but in all honesty, they’re really great when visiting a large city like Madrid. I usually buy a 2-day pass which you can use an unlimited number of times within that two-day period. I ride the entire loop for my first ride and then hop off in an area I want to explore. It’s a fantastic way to see the city and to save some money on taxi or car sharing services. After our initial loop we got off of the bus not far from where we started at Puerto del Sol and took the metro to Las Ventas Bullring. Taking the metro in Madrid is very easy and simple, plus it’s cheap! It costs less than €5 each way and only took about 20 minutes from the Sevilla stop to Ventas stop.
Las Ventas Bullring is the largest bullfighting ring in all of Spain and actively holds bullfights to this day. If seeing a bullfight is on your list of things to do while you’re visiting Madrid, then be sure to look up event dates prior to your trip and purchase tickets either online or outside the arena the week of. Witnessing a bullfight was not something we wanted to do, but we were very interested in learning more about the fights and the history behind them and this museum is the perfect place to do so! We purchased our museum tickets online prior to our trip and had to select an entry-time for our visit. The museum offers a self-guided audio tour where you learn the origins of bullfighting and why the Matadors dress the way they do. The audio tour takes you around half of the arena and you can even walk on the arena floor if you’d like! After touring the arena, you will head over to the museum building where you can see Matador outfits dating back centuries, as well as old event posters and other memorabilia and artwork. The museum also does a good job of not only celebrating the Matador, but also celebrates the bull itself and teaches you the process of raising and selecting the bulls for fighting. Visiting Las Ventas Bullring may not be for everyone, but if you’ve ever been curious to learn more about bullfighting then be sure to add this to your list. If Las Ventas doesn't interest you, then this is a great time to visit popular museums such as Prado Museum or the Reina Sofia Museum.
Spend the rest of the afternoon near Madrid’s Royal Palace where you can have lunch near Parque del Oeste at one of the many little outdoor cafes, which is a 20-minute walk away from the palace. After a relaxing lunch, spend only €6 to ride the Madrid Teleférico, a cable car that takes you over Casa de Campo park and lets you see the city from a different angle. There are 80 cable cars that hold up to 6 passengers each, but it wasn’t busy at all when we visited so we had a car to ourselves and loved it! As you make your way back to the palace, stop at Temple of Debod where you can go inside this ancient temple if the line isn’t too long. Either way, it’s a rare sight to see! The last stop of the day before dinner is the Royal Palace of Madrid, which is absolutely stunning once you step through the gates! You can choose to visit the palace on your own, purchase a skip-the-line ticket (and it does get crowded so this is a great choice!), or you can book a small group guided tour which is what we did and our guide was amazing. Again, because we visited in October, a lot of the tours weren’t fully booked so we ended up having this guide all to ourselves. Booking a small group guided tour allows you to also skip the entrance lines and you get to ask questions along the way and learn more about the history of the palace & the Spanish royal family since your guide is a local. The palace is very large so plan to spend about two hours here and don’t forget to walk the grounds before you leave. If you have time, take a few minutes to go inside Almudena Cathedral, located near the Royal Palace. This cathedral began being constructed in 1883, was abandoned, and then finally completed in 1993 - the contrast in architecture is interesting to say the least! Entrance to the cathedral is free, as are many things in Madrid, but donations are recommended.
Day 5 - Shopping and San Miguel Market
Aside from rich history and gorgeous architecture, there are two other things that Madrid is known for: food and shopping. The best shopping in Madrid is found in the city center, where you can find popular Spanish retailers like Pull & Bear, Zara, Mango, and more, but spend some time wandering the small streets in the older part of town for absolute gems! Steps from Plaza Mayor you can find handmade and custom espadrilles at Casa Hernanz who has been in business since 1825 and is one of the shops in Madrid to buy espadrilles. It will help if you know some Spanish, but the staff will do their best to try to understand you. I made sure to purchase two pairs of sandals and I wear them every chance I get. Another hidden gem not far from Plaza Mayor is Casa Vega who specializes in leather handbags and has been around since 1860! They’ve recently turned over to new owners who are doing a great job of revitalizing the brand’s heritage and bringing it back to its roots. Their bags range from woven totes made from recycled materials to beautiful crochet purses, leather travel bags, and more.
Once you’ve found enough goodies to take home with you, have lunch at San Miguel Market. This building opened in 1916 as a local food and merchant market and was revamped into an upscale food hall in 2009 and is a very popular place to visit in Madrid. You can find a wide variety of food inside the market and it’s one of the best places to taste multiple dishes in one place! We made sure to try a mini lobster roll, artisan cheeses, empanadas, sangria, and split a couple of sweet treats on the way out. If you want to avoid crowds, then it’s best to arrive right after opening or an hour before closing. Inside the market there are tables and high-top bars with seating, but these tend to go fast. One tip that worked for us is once you find a table, have one person from your group stay at the table while the others go and get the food.
The remainder of the day is a free day to rest, explore, or revisit anything that caught your eye the days prior. We ended up loving the food so much that we went on another tapas tour in Madrid! As I said before, tapas tours in Madrid are the best way to taste your way through the city! This tour took us to four different tapas bars and one restaurant ended up being a place we visited on our first tour but loved it so we didn’t mind at all. We met our tour guide in Puerto del Sol and made are way from there to the area surrounding Plaza Mayor where we tried the popular calamari sandwich, the most delicious chorizo I’ve ever had at Casa Toni, and ended the tour with churros and chocolate at Churrería Chocolateria 1902.
Madrid is a great place to visit, and I loved getting to know the city! There is so much history and culture, and it can be seen throughout the city everywhere you turn. If you're planning on visiting Madrid for the first time, I hope this Madrid 5 day itinerary has helped you get started and inspired you to maybe stay a little longer in this beautiful city than you initially anticipated and why visit Madrid. As always, feel free to send me an email with any questions and I’d be happy to help and take a look at my other Spain posts for travel tips, including Barcelona! And if you’re looking for more assistance planning your trip than a question or two, be sure to check out my trip planning service where I meet with you virtually to help build a custom itinerary.
Happy travels!
-Tess
Tess Arnold
Hi! I’m Tess, founder of TravelingTessie.com, and not only do I love to travel, but I love immersing myself in new places and finding off the beaten path experiences wherever I go! I’ve lived in 4 different states & traveled to 13 countries and counting. I believe that tourism is meant to benefit both visitors and locals alike—and I want to bring that idea back into the travel industry by highlighting companies run by locals such as tours, hotels, restaurants, and more. On Traveling Tessie you can find hidden gems in top destinations around the world, travel tips, detailed city guides, and tons of inspiration for your next trip! If you love travel as much as I do, then please join me on this journey! I hope you enjoy my content as much as I enjoy providing it for you!
