Madrid
The home city. Flat, late, cheap to eat in, and built for leaving the house.
19 places · 3 guides
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Madrid · Lisbon · Rome
We know a place.
A curated guide to stays, tables, drinks and trips. Addresses worth knowing, written to be used on the day — not bookmarked and forgotten.
19 places in Madrid · 9 guides · see them on the map
Templo de Debod, the free sunset. Javier Perez Montes · CC BY-SA 4.0
Where we are
Start here
Drinks
Madrid bars with date-night energy
low lights, good drinks, no rush to leave.
Not the loudest rooms in the city — the ones where you can still hear each other at midnight.
Itinerary
The Madrid Sunday
There is a correct way to spend Sunday in this city and it ends with you achieving nothing. Here is the route.
TripsSponsored
Rome's quiet hours
The same square can be unbearable at two and close to empty at half past seven. Almost all Rome advice is really timing advice.
Stays
Where to stay in Madrid
Central Madrid does not get quiet until about four. That single fact should decide your booking.
Tables
Places worth planning a day around. Markets, counters and the one street everyone ends up on.
Tables · Market
Mercado de la Cebada
A working market under a wave of green roofs, with bars wedged between the fish counters.
La LatinaMadrid1/4
Tables · Terrace street
Calle Argumosa
The Lavapiés street that is almost entirely terraces, and the best value in central Madrid.
LavapiésMadrid1/4
Tables · Food hall
Time Out Market Lisboa
The city's nineteenth-century market hall, half of it now a curated food court.
Cais do SodréLisbon2/4
Tables · Pastelaria
Pastéis de Belém
The original custard tart, made to a recipe the shop has kept since 1837.
BelémLisbon1/4
Tables · Pizza by weight
A pizza al taglio counter in Trastevere
Sample entry: trays in the window, cut with scissors, sold by weight.
TrastevereRome1/4Sample
Tables · Market
Mercato Testaccio
The neighbourhood market that is worth crossing the city for, especially at lunchtime.
TestaccioRome1/4
Stays
Stays · Apartment
An attic room off Plaza Mayor
Sample entry: top floor, sloped ceiling, and the whole centre on your doorstep — plus the noise that comes with it.
CentroMadrid3/4Sample
Stays · Apartment
A Chamberí flat for a long stay
Sample entry: residential, quiet, better value, and twenty minutes' walk from everything you came for.
ChamberíMadrid2/4Sample
Stays · Guesthouse
A tiled townhouse in Alfama
Sample entry: six rooms behind an azulejo facade, three floors, no lift.
AlfamaLisbon2/4Sample
Trips
Trips · Square
Plaza del Dos de Mayo
The square Malasaña is organised around, and the clearest picture of how this city uses an evening.
MalasañaMadrid
Trips · Viewpoint
Templo de Debod
A second-century BC Egyptian temple, given to Spain in 1968, with the best free sunset in the city.
ArgüellesMadrid
Trips · Flea market
El Rastro
Sunday morning, a thousand stalls running downhill, and a city-wide agreement to be slow afterwards.
La Latina / EmbajadoresMadrid1/4
Trips · Park
Parque del Retiro
A former royal garden, public since 1868, and the city's shared back garden ever since.
RetiroMadrid
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New addresses, openings worth knowing about, and the occasional weekend plan. Free, and there is nothing behind it to buy.
3 Madrid guides published so far.
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