Three of the world's great museums within a single walk, and the city where Velázquez and Goya worked for the court.
The Spanish royal collection: Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Titian, Bosch, Rubens. The Goya Black Paintings are on the ground floor.
Spain's national museum of modern art in an 18th-century hospital, with Picasso's Guernica.
A collector's survey of European painting, with the early Netherlandish and German painters the Prado lacks, and the Americans.
Joaquín Sorolla's house and studio, kept as he left it, with an Andalusian garden he designed himself.
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
A small chapel whose dome Goya painted in 1798 with a crowd of Madrileños watching a miracle. He is buried below it.
A marquis's palace left exactly as it was in 1922: ballroom, armour, clocks, mirrors and every surface covered.
The academy Goya directed, with his Burial of the Sardine and works by Zurbarán and Rubens. Rarely crowded.
Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza's 1969 tower of round concrete balconies, meant to grow like a tree.
A glass-and-iron greenhouse of 1887 on a lake, now used by the Reina Sofía for single-artist installations.
The Duchess of Osuna's 18th-century romantic garden, with a hermit's house, a bee palace and a Civil War bunker underneath.
El Greco's city and his Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 35 minutes by train.
The Prado at opening → lunch → the Thyssen → San Antonio de la Florida → sunset at the Templo de Debod.