MAD.NBHD· District
Lavapiés
Madrid Neighbourhood Guide
Cosmopolitan, diverse, bohemian
Madrid's most multicultural barrio — a steep tangle of streets where Senegalese, Bangladeshi, Chinese and centuries-old castizo kitchens sit within a block of each other. The city's best street art and its most genuinely mixed crowd.
Day Trips from Madrid
Toledo · Segovia · El Escorial · Ávila
Pick up at Madrid-Barajas Airport — free cancellation on most cars
Explore Lavapiés
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Taberna de Antonio Sánchez
Reputedly the oldest taberna in Madrid, pouring since 1830 — bullfighting memorabilia on every wall, a zinc-topped bar, and traditional Castilian dishes served exactly as unfussily as the décor suggests.
Museo Reina Sofía
Spain's national museum of 20th-century art, built around a single overwhelming reason to visit: Picasso's Guernica, displayed in its own room exactly as the artist intended. The permanent collection beyond it covers Dalí, Miró, and the full arc of Spanish modernism.
Estación de Atocha
Madrid's grandest railway station — a 19th-century wrought-iron train shed whose old departure hall was converted in 1992 into a tropical garden of more than 7,000 plants and a resident population of turtles in a central pond. Still a fully working station, and free to wander through.