Five days lets Madrid slow down: the big three museums one per day, a full day at El Escorial, and the small house-museums that shorter trips never reach.
Five days changes what kind of trip this is. The first three cover what everyone comes for and are deliberately the same shape as the three-day itinerary — one Golden Triangle museum per day, the palace, the parks — but with the pace loosened and a few things added that a three-day trip has to cut. Days four and five are the real gain: a full day at El Escorial, and a day given over to the small house-museums that are, for a lot of people, the best rooms in Madrid.
Two planning decisions up front. Buy the Paseo del Arte pass (around €32, valid a year) for the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen. And check which weekday your fourth day lands on, because El Escorial closes Mondays and the museum-heavy day five wants a Tuesday to Friday if possible.
Day one — the Prado, Retiro, and sunset over Debod
Old Madrid before nine
Puerta del Sol, then Plaza Mayor while it is still empty, then a three-minute detour to Plaza de la Villa, where 15th-, 16th- and 17th-century buildings share one square. Back for the 10:00 opening at Mercado de San Miguel — a weekday late morning is the only hour you can see the ironwork ceiling instead of the backs of people’s heads.
Three unhurried hours at the Prado
Fifteen minutes on foot from Sol, or Line 2 to Banco de España. Book a timed slot regardless of whether you are paying the €15 or using the pass.
The Prado rewards slow looking more than broad coverage, and with five days you have no reason to sprint. Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (Room 56A), Velázquez on the first floor with Las Meninas in Room 12 and the much quieter Las Hilanderas in Room 75B, then down to Room 67 for the Black Paintings Goya put on the walls of his own house. Photography is banned throughout and enforced.
Botanical garden, lake, late lunch
The Royal Botanical Garden is €4 and two minutes from the Prado’s south gate — free Tuesdays 10:00–13:00. Then El Retiro, entering at the Puerta de la Independencia gate so the lake and the Palacio de Cristal fall on one loop. The glass pavilion is shut inside for restoration until roughly 2027; the pond reflection is the picture anyway. Lunch at 14:00 in Barrio de las Letras.
The long walk west
Puerta de Alcalá, Plaza de Cibeles, then the full length of Gran Vía — 25 minutes, better as the marquees come on — to Plaza de España and eight minutes beyond to the Temple of Debod for sunset. Arrive 30 to 45 minutes early for a terrace spot. Dinner at 21:00.
Day two — royal Madrid, with the convent most people miss
Palace at ten, cathedral after
Timed ticket for the 10:00 opening at the Royal Palace; €18 self-guided covers the state rooms, Royal Armoury and Royal Pharmacy. Two to 2.5 hours on a fixed circuit — slow down at the Throne Room and the Gasparini Room, and find the Royal Kitchens in the basement, opened to the public only in 2017.
Almudena Cathedral across the forecourt is free for the nave, €6–7 for crypt or dome. Then Plaza de Oriente, the Sabatini Gardens along the north facade, and — this is one of the things five days buys you — an hour in Campo del Moro below the west facade, for the angle on the palace that almost no visitor photograph has.
Descalzas Reales, if you can make the tour slot
Five minutes from Sol, the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales is the most overlooked major sight in central Madrid: a working convent, still, stuffed with Habsburg-donated art. The catch is real — visits are guided-tour only, an hour long, mostly in Spanish, at fixed times, with limited English slots that sell out on weekends. Hours are Tue–Sat 10:00–14:00 and 16:00–18:30, Sun 10:00–15:00, closed Mondays; about €9, free for EU and Ibero-American citizens Wed–Thu 16:00–18:30.
Book the English slot online before your trip. If you cannot get one, this is a fair thing to drop.
La Latina, and a basilica nobody visits
Lunch at 14:00 in La Latina — €2.50–5 tapas, and better off Cava Baja on Calle del Almendro or Cava Alta. Ten minutes downhill, the Basílica de San Francisco el Grande holds the fourth-largest dome in Europe plus Goya and Zurbarán canvases, for about €6 and free on Thursdays. Museum hours are narrow — Tue–Sat 10:30–12:30 and 16:00–17:30 in winter, Tue–Fri 10:30–14:30 in summer — so check before walking down.
Guernica late, rooftop later
The Reina Sofía runs to 21:00 Monday and Wednesday to Saturday, €12, closed Tuesdays, Sundays only to 14:30. Free Saturdays 14:30–21:00 and Sunday mornings. Arrive around 17:00 and the crowd in front of Guernica has thinned considerably from its mid-morning peak.
Finish on the Círculo de Bellas Artes rooftop for about €5.50 — tickets sold only at reception between 14:00–16:00 and after 21:00 — then dinner whenever you get hungry, which in Madrid means after nine.
Day three — the third museum, the northern barrios, flamenco
Thyssen in the morning
The Thyssen-Bornemisza opens Tue–Sun 10:00–19:00, Mondays 12:00–16:00 with the permanent collection free (door tickets only). €13 standard, or covered by the pass. Two hours, top floor down: it bridges everything between the Prado’s Old Masters and the Reina Sofía’s 20th century, medieval altarpieces through to Pop Art.
Then fifteen minutes south along the Paseo del Prado to CaixaForum, where the suspended brick block and its vertical garden wall cost nothing to look at from the plaza.
Malasaña, Chueca, and a €3 museum
North after lunch. Malasaña is eight minutes above Gran Vía — vintage shops, Plaza del Dos de Mayo, and the plaques for Manuela Malasaña. The Museum of Romanticism nearby is €3, closed Mondays, free all Sunday and Saturdays from 14:00, and works as a walk-through of a real 19th-century Madrid household rather than a gallery.
Cross east into Chueca and finish on the rooftop of Mercado de San Antón, which has no cover charge for a drink.
Tablao at half eight
Corral de la Morería runs two shows nightly, around 20:30 and 22:20; the earlier one is less rushed. Show with a drink from about €50. Book weeks ahead for weekends.
Day four — El Escorial, and why it needs the whole day
Getting there: Cercanías C-3 or the Moncloa bus, not the Metro
No Metro line goes anywhere near it. The Royal Seat of San Lorenzo de El Escorial is 45km out, and there are two sane ways to reach it. The Cercanías C-3 line runs from Madrid-Chamartín or Madrid-Atocha to El Escorial station in about an hour — direct Atocha services are limited, so check which station your train actually leaves from — and from the station it is a short local bus or a 20-minute uphill walk. Alternatively, direct buses from Moncloa bus station take about an hour and drop you closer to the complex than the train does.
Check the timetable the night before. Both run far less often than in-city Metro, and missing a return connection turns a comfortable day into a long one. Budget two hours of round-trip travel plus three to four hours on site.
Aim for the 10:00 opening
The site opens Tue–Sun at 10:00, closing 18:00 October to March and 19:00 April to September, with the ticket office shutting an hour and a quarter before that. Closed Mondays. Standard adult entry is about €14, reduced €7, guided tour €22 — the self-guided ticket already covers the monastery, basilica, palace rooms and library, and the guided version is worth it mainly if you want the history narrated rather than read off placards.
Arriving at opening beats both the coach tours and the late-morning wave of Madrid day-trippers, and gets you across the exposed granite courtyards before the heat builds.
What you are actually walking through
Philip II started building in 1563, and the result fuses a palace, a monastery, a basilica, a library, a school and a royal mausoleum into one granite complex — substantially finished in twenty-one years. Juan de Herrera’s severity here is the whole point, and it is the exact opposite building to the Royal Palace you saw on day two.
The Royal Pantheon beneath the basilica is the space people remember: an octagonal marble chamber holding most Spanish monarchs since Charles V, still in use. The library and Philip II’s private apartments are the other two anchors — the apartments deliberately austere, reportedly positioned so he could see the basilica’s high altar from his bed. Photography is banned in the pantheon and several state rooms and library areas.
Bring a heavier layer than Madrid calls for: the complex sits higher and cooler in the Guadarrama foothills.
Back in the city by seven
You will land back in Madrid tired, so plan the evening light. Dinner in Malasaña or on the Mercado de San Antón rooftop needs no walking, or if you have anything left, the illuminated palace facade seen from the Sabatini Gardens reflecting pool at night — open to 22:00 May to September, 21:00 the rest of the year — is one of the better free views in the city.
Day five — Goya’s dome, three house-museums, and a farewell dinner
This is the day short trips never get to, and it is mostly €3 admissions and rooms where you will be nearly alone.
Goya’s ceiling at half nine
Start at the Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, Tue–Sun 09:30–20:00 and free every open day. Metro Príncipe Pío on Lines 6 and 10, then five to ten minutes on foot. Thirty to forty-five minutes is enough: it is a small chapel with a Goya-frescoed dome above your head and Goya himself buried below. Free guided tours in Spanish and English run Saturdays at 11:00 and noon.
From there, Madrid Río starts five minutes away — the Príncipe Pío to Puente de Segovia stretch is a good half-hour riverside walk if the weather is with you.
Cerralbo, before it shuts at three
Metro two stops to Plaza de España for the Museo Cerralbo, €3, an aristocratic house left almost exactly as its owner arranged it in the 1890s. Its hours are the trap: Tue–Sat 09:30–15:00 only, with a second window Thursdays 17:00–20:00 (free), plus Sundays 10:00–15:00 (free). Last entry an hour before closing, and parts of the upper floor are seen on timed guided visits included in the ticket, so ask at the desk when you arrive.
If your day five is a Monday, Cerralbo is closed and so is almost everything else on this list — swap the whole day for the Royal Palace, the Prado and the Thyssen’s free Monday window.
Debod in daylight, then lunch
Eight minutes away, the Temple of Debod is worth a second visit in daylight for the reason nobody does it: at sunset you are looking at a silhouette, but the carved reliefs and hieroglyphs inside are the actual antiquity. The interior chapel opens Tue–Sun 10:00–20:00 in winter and 10:00–19:00 in high summer, and needs a free timed ticket reserved online through madrid.es.
Lunch at 14:00. If you want a market that is not built for tourists, Mercado de La Paz in Salamanca is open Mon–Fri 09:00–20:30 and Saturdays to 14:30, closed Sundays, and Casa Dani’s tortilla runs €3–6.
Sorolla, then Lázaro Galdiano
Two of Madrid’s best small museums sit within a fifteen-minute walk of each other north of the centre, and both take afternoon visitors.
The Sorolla Museum is the painter’s actual home and studio, kept as he left it, with an Andalusian garden — €3, Tue–Sat 09:30–20:00, Sun 10:00–15:00, closed Mondays, free Saturdays from 14:00 and all Sunday. Metro Gregorio Marañón, Lines 7 and 10. Give it an hour to ninety minutes and do not rush the domestic rooms to get at the paintings; the house is half the exhibit.
Then the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, about ten minutes on foot, €8, open Tue–Fri 09:30–15:00 and 16:30–19:30 — that afternoon session is what makes this pairing work, and it does not exist at weekends. Free Tue–Fri 14:00–15:00 if you would rather flip the order. It is a private collector’s mansion holding Goya, Bosch and a small panel attributed to Leonardo’s circle, and it is reliably almost empty.
If you would rather have one bigger museum than two small ones, the National Archaeological Museum is €3, open Tue–Sat 09:30–20:00, and its basement holds a full-scale replica of the Altamira painted ceiling — the original cave is closed to the public permanently.
Last dinner
Sobrino de Botín, two minutes off Plaza Mayor, has been running since 1725 and serves from 20:00 — roast suckling pig around €32, €50–70 a head all in, and a reservation is genuinely necessary. If that is not the note you want to end on, Plaza de Santa Ana and the streets of Barrio de las Letras do a better late-night terrace at a third of the price.
Fitting a Sunday into five days
El Rastro runs 09:00–15:00 on Sundays and public holidays only, and with five days you have no excuse to miss it. Take whichever day is your Sunday, start at the market at 09:00 for the selection and the smaller crowd, keep your bag zipped and in front of you, then move into the La Latina tapeo from 13:00 — the single most local thing in this itinerary.
Build the rest of that Sunday around what is actually open: the Prado closes at 19:00, the Reina Sofía at 14:30, the Royal Palace at 16:00, and Sorolla, Cerralbo, the Museum of Romanticism and the Archaeological Museum are all free. Save the paid interiors and El Escorial for the weekdays.
For getting between all of this, see getting around Madrid; for deciding which months make the long outdoor days pleasant rather than punishing, the weather and best time to visit guide is the one to read before booking.
Covered in this guide
must seePuerta del Sol
Madrid's busiest square marks Spain's Kilometer Zero and the symbolic heart of the city, home to the Bear and Strawberry Tree statue and the New Year's Eve clock.
must seePlaza Mayor
Madrid's grandest 17th-century square, ringed by porticoed apartments and cafe terraces, has hosted royal weddings, bullfights, and the Inquisition.
Plaza de la Villa
One of Madrid's best-preserved medieval squares, ringed by 15th- to 17th-century buildings just steps from Plaza Mayor, and often overlooked entirely.
must seeMercado de San Miguel
A 1916 cast-iron produce market reborn as Madrid's most glamorous gourmet tapas hall, where oysters, vermouth, and jamón ibérico change hands under a century-old glass roof.
must seeMuseo del Prado
Spain's national gallery holds the deepest collection of European painting anywhere, anchored by Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's Black Paintings, and Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights.
Royal Botanical Garden (Real Jardín Botánico)
An 8-hectare walled garden next to the Prado with thousands of plant species, terraced walkways, and a calm that the surrounding avenues don't have.