4 Best Sights in Madrid, Spain

After a 20-month closure for renovations, this important 16th-century monastery reopened to the public in late 2021 with 200 new works from its art collection on display. The plain brick-and-stone facade belies an opulent interior strewn with paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán, Titian, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder—all part of the dowry of new monastery inductees—as well as a hall of sumptuous tapestries crafted from drawings by Peter Paul Rubens. Fifty works from the collection were meticulously restored as part of the recent renovations. The convent was founded in 1559 by Juana of Austria, one of Felipe II's sisters, who ruled Spain while he was in England and the Netherlands. It houses 33 different chapels—the age of Christ when he died and the maximum number of nuns allowed to live at the monastery—with more than 120 immaculately preserved crucifixes among them. About a dozen nuns still live here and grow vegetables in the garden.  You must take a tour in order to visit the convent, and tickets must be bought online ahead of time (they sell out fast); those who don't speak Spanish can access an English guide through the app. 

There's some debate over whether this church, the oldest in central Madrid, once formed part of an Arab mosque. It was more likely built after the so-called Reconquest of Madrid in 1083, but the brickwork and horseshoe arches are evidence that it was crafted by either Mudejars (workers of Islamic origin) or Christian Spaniards well versed in the style. Inside, exhibits detail the Islamic history of early Madrid.

Once connected to the Palacio Real by an underground passageway, this cloistered Augustinian convent now houses fewer than a dozen nuns. It was founded in 1611 by Queen Margarita de Austria, the wife of Felipe III, and has several artistic treasures, including a reliquary where a vial with the dried blood of St. Pantaleón is said to liquefy every July 27. The ornate church has superb acoustics for medieval and Renaissance choral concerts. Tours are in Spanish only and take about 90 minutes.

Ferdinand and Isabella used this church and cloister behind the Prado as a retiro, or place of respite—hence the name of the adjacent park. The building, one of the oldest in the city (built in the early 16th century), was devastated in the Napoleonic Wars and rebuilt in the late 19th century.