Madrid Sightseeing: Tickets and Hours
Madrid’s headline sights sit inside about a two-kilometre rectangle, which means the whole planning problem is closing days rather than distance. Three of the big ones shut on three different days of the week, one is morning-only, and the single most photographed building in Retiro is behind scaffolding until 2027. Sort that out and Madrid’s core is genuinely a three-day city on foot.
Opening days you have to plan around
| Sight | Price | Closed |
|---|---|---|
| Museo del Prado | 15 EUR | no weekday |
| Museo Reina Sofía | 12 EUR | Tuesdays |
| Museo Thyssen | 14 EUR | open Mon 12:00 to 16:00 only |
| Royal Palace | 18 EUR | short notice for state events |
| Temple of Debod | free | Mondays |
| Almudena dome | 7 EUR | Sundays and all afternoons |
The Golden Triangle, and what that phrase means
The Golden Triangle of Art is three museums, not three towns: the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, all within a ten-minute walk of each other along the Paseo del Prado. Together with Retiro and the Royal Botanical Garden they sit inside “Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro, a Landscape of Arts and Sciences”, inscribed by UNESCO on 25 July 2021 across roughly 200 hectares and 109 elements. Each museum is part of that World Heritage Site rather than a listed site in its own right.
Start at the Prado, 15 EUR or 7.50 EUR reduced, open Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 20:00 and Sunday to 19:00, closing on no weekday at all. Give it two to three hours for Las Meninas, the Black Paintings, The Third of May 1808 and Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Its free evening window runs Monday to Saturday 18:00 to 20:00 and Sunday and holidays 17:00 to 19:00, permanent collection only, with a same-day reservation still required. Booking opens on the Prado’s own site .
The Reina Sofía is 12 EUR and closes on Tuesdays. Guernica hangs in Room 205.10 of the Sabatini Building, and the museum’s own crowd advice is to avoid 10:00 to 12:00 and the 19:00 free-window rush in favour of the 14:00 to 18:00 lull. Hours are at the Reina Sofía visitor page .
The Thyssen is 14 EUR and fills the gaps in both collections, running from medieval panels to Pop Art. Mondays it opens only from 12:00 to 16:00, free and walk-up; Saturdays it stays open to 23:00.
Royal Palace: what 18 EUR buys in 2026
Admission is 18 EUR general, 9 EUR reduced, with a guided visit at 26 EUR. The building is Europe’s largest functioning royal palace by floor area, around 135,000 square metres with more than 3,400 rooms, and it works as a ceremonial palace rather than a home: the royal family stopped living here in 1931 and Felipe VI is at the Zarzuela Palace, which is closed to visitors. Hours run April to September, Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 19:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 16:00, then October to March, Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 18:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 16:00. It can close at short notice for state functions.
The big change worth timing a visit around is the Royal Armoury, reopened in April 2026 after roughly two years shut for a 1.06 million EUR conservation and redisplay project. It is included in the standard ticket and puts about 2,500 pieces on show from a collection of over 7,000, the most important armour collection in Spain.
Two things are not included. The Royal Kitchen is a separate ticket, and so is the Gallery of the Royal Collections on Calle Bailén between the palace and the cathedral, opened in 2023 at 14 EUR, 7 EUR reduced, Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 20:00 and Sunday to 19:00, about two hours. A combined Palace and Gallery ticket at 24 EUR exists and the Gallery leg stays valid for seven days afterwards. Both are ticketed through Patrimonio Nacional’s official channel . Timed Royal Palace entry slots are also sold through the aggregators.
Where can you get above Madrid?
Four places, and none of them is a palace roof. The Círculo de Bellas Artes azotea on Calle de Alcalá 42 charges 6 EUR and stays open past midnight. The 360º Rooftop Bar at the Riu Plaza España runs 5 EUR by day and 10 EUR from 17:00. Mirador Madrid on the eighth floor of the Palacio de Cibeles is 3 EUR on timed slots, closed Mondays. The Almudena dome sits over 70 metres up, reached on foot from inside the cathedral museum.
That Almudena ticket is the one people miss. The nave is free on a voluntary 1 EUR donation, 10:00 to 19:30 daily outside services, but the museum, sacristy, chapterhouse and dome together cost 7 EUR, 5 EUR reduced, 3 EUR student, and they open Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 14:30 only, with last entry around 14:00. You cannot buy the dome on its own and you cannot do it on a Sunday.
Temple of Debod, Retiro and the free half of the list
The Temple of Debod is a genuine second-century-BCE Egyptian temple, given to Spain by Egypt in 1968 in thanks for Spanish help rescuing the Nubian monuments during the Aswan Dam project. Free, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 20:00, closed Mondays, capacity-limited, with a free timed reservation strongly advised at weekends. It stands on a rise in the Parque del Oeste above the Manzanares valley, and sunset runs from about 17:30 in winter to past 21:00 in July.
Retiro has no gates and no ticket, roughly 06:00 to midnight. The Palacio de Cristal is wrapped for the whole of 2026 in a printed textile work while its 5,000 glass panes are replaced, reopening around summer 2027, so build the walk around the Estanque Grande and its rowing boats at 6 EUR on weekdays and 8 EUR at weekends, the 1877 Fallen Angel statue, the Rosaleda, the Palacio de Velázquez and the Monumento a Alfonso XII colonnade.
The streets that are sights in themselves
Gran Vía was cut through the city between 1910 and 1929 and cost more than 300 buildings; the Metropolis at its foot, finished in 1911 by Jules and Raymond Février, carries a gilded Winged Victory on a black dome. Plaza de Cibeles has a fountain built between 1777 and 1782 under Charles III to Ventura Rodríguez’s design, and it is where Real Madrid celebrate while Atlético use the Neptune fountain down the road. The permanent exhibition inside CentroCentro on the 1919 Antonio Palacios post office is free; details are at the CentroCentro site .
Behind the cathedral, about 120 metres of the Muralla Árabe survive from the ninth century, a National Monument since 1954. Madrid began as Mayrit, a fortress founded around 865 CE by the Umayyad Emir Muhammad I of Córdoba, which makes it one of very few European capitals with an Islamic founding.
The 11-M memorial at Atocha
On 11 March 2004, ten bombs on four commuter trains killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800. A tribute space with 193 points of light opened at Atocha on 10 March 2024. It is a place of quiet respect rather than a stop on a photo route.
Two days is tight and three is comfortable. Sequence it with the 3 day Madrid itinerary , add guided context through the attraction tours guide , and if you want the Paseo del Prado at walking distance, compare hotels near the museums rather than near the airport line.
Book the Prado for a first thing in the morning, then walk to the Reina Sofía for the 14:00 to 18:00 quiet stretch. Doing it in that order beats any skip-the-line ticket you can buy.