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Tetuán is one of Madrid’s 21 administrative districts, sitting north of Chamberí and south of Fuencarral-El Pardo, roughly between Paseo de la Castellana and the old road out to Fuencarral. It began as a separate settlement outside the city, was folded into Madrid in 1948, and today is a dense, largely residential and commercial district … Read more

Retiro is one of Madrid’s 21 administrative districts (distritos), and the park most visitors know by that name occupies only its western edge. The district itself is a wedge of largely residential city east of the park, made up of six official neighbourhoods (barrios), stretching from Paseo del Prado to the Calle O’Donnell corridor and … Read more

Arganzuela is one of Madrid’s 21 administrative districts, sitting immediately south of the historic centre along the Manzanares river. Madrid Río is not a district but a long riverside park, built largely within Arganzuela, that covers a stretch of ring road buried underground between 2005 and 2011. One is an area of the city; the … Read more

Madrid de los Austrias — “Habsburg Madrid” — is not an administrative district but a name for the oldest surviving core of the city, built up while the Spanish Habsburgs (called los Austrias in Spanish) ruled from Madrid between 1561 and 1700. It covers roughly the area around Plaza Mayor, Plaza de la Villa, and … Read more

The Barrio de las Letras is a small district in central Madrid, roughly bounded by the Carrera de San Jerónimo, the Paseo del Prado, Calle de Atocha and Plaza de Santa Ana. It takes its name from the writers of Spain’s Golden Age — Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Francisco de Quevedo and Luis … Read more

Chamberí is a district in central-north Madrid, built up mostly in the 19th and early 20th centuries for civil servants, professionals and the military. Beneath its main square, Plaza de Chamberí, sits a metro station that opened in 1919, closed in 1966, and now survives intact as a small free museum called Andén 0 — … Read more

The Barrio de Salamanca is a 19th-century district east of Retiro park, built from the 1860s onward as a planned extension to a Madrid that had outgrown its old walls. It was laid out on a strict grid by private developers under a royal-authorised city plan, which is why its streets run straight and its … Read more

Chueca is a small neighbourhood in central Madrid, part of the Centro district, built around a square called Plaza de Chueca. It is Madrid’s best-known LGBTQ+ district, a status it acquired from the late 1980s onward, and it hosts much of the city’s Pride celebration each summer. Before that, it was simply a dense, working-class … Read more

Malasaña is a district in central Madrid, part of the Universidad ward within the Centro district, sitting north of Gran Vía. The name comes from Manuela Malasaña, a young woman traditionally said to have been killed there during the anti-French uprising of 2 May 1808, an event the area still commemorates in its central square. … Read more

Lavapiés is a barrio (neighbourhood) in the Centro district of Madrid, just south of Sol and east of La Latina. It grew up outside the city’s old walls as a working-class quarter with roots in a medieval Jewish community, later filled with dense 19th-century tenement housing, and has been Madrid’s principal immigrant-receiving district since the … Read more