The Community of Madrid is a single-province autonomous community at the geographical centre of Spain. Triangular in shape, it has over seven million inhabitants, almost half of them in the capital, and is the country's richest region by GDP. But around Madrid there are historic towns, royal palaces, villages and mountains worth visiting, easily reached by suburban trains (Cercanías) and buses.
Madrid
The capital alone deserves several days: the Art Triangle of the Prado, Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza, the Royal Palace, Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol, Retiro park, the Gran Vía and the nightlife districts. The Paseo del Prado and the Retiro have been a UNESCO site since 2021 as a "landscape of light" (see Madrid, sights and nightlife).
Royal and UNESCO towns
- San Lorenzo de El Escorial, an hour from the capital at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama: the Escorial monastery, built by Philip II in the sixteenth century, is an immense complex of palace, monastery, basilica, library and pantheon of the kings of Spain, a UNESCO site. Nearby is Cuelgamuros Valley, the former Valley of the Fallen, the monument built by Franco, now the subject of a project to turn it into a place of memory.
- Alcalá de Henares, birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, with its historic university, a UNESCO site; every year on 23 April the Cervantes Prize is awarded here.
- Aranjuez, on the Tagus, with the royal palace and gardens where the court spent the spring, a UNESCO cultural landscape, celebrated in Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez.
Villages and mountains
Chinchón has one of Spain's most picturesque plazas mayores, ringed by wooden balconies, and is famous for anisette. Manzanares el Real has an almost intact fifteenth-century castle at the foot of La Pedriza. The Sierra de Guadarrama, a national park since 2013, offers hiking in summer and skiing in winter at Navacerrada, less than an hour from the city. Buitrago del Lozoya, Patones de Arriba, with its slate houses, and Rascafría, with the Paular monastery, are other day-trip destinations.
The metropolitan area
Around the capital spreads a large metropolitan area with cities of hundreds of thousands of people, such as Móstoles, Alcalá, Fuenlabrada, Leganés, Getafe and Alcorcón, and residential towns such as Boadilla del Monte, Pozuelo and Las Rozas, among the richest in the country; to the south-east are Parla and Velilla de San Antonio. Below you will find a map of our guides and all the community's municipalities with at least 5,000 inhabitants.
Destinations on the map
Guides to the community
Alcalá de Henares
Cervantes's birthplace and home to one of Europe's first modern universities: Alcalá is a city of students, arcades and storks, half an…
Aranjuez
A green oasis between the Tagus and Jarama rivers, where the kings of Spain spent their springs among palaces, gardens and fountains.
Boadilla del Monte
One of the greenest and wealthiest towns in the Community of Madrid, with a neoclassical palace linked to Goya and a large holm-oak wood.
Madrid
Capital since 1561, Madrid is an open, lively city with three of the world's great museums, squares full of life and nights that never end.
Parla
From small farming village to young, multicultural city: Parla is one of the fastest-growing towns around Madrid.
Velilla de San Antonio
A quiet town between the Jarama lagoons and the countryside east of Madrid, grown into a residential town well connected with the capital.