Mad for Madrid – the Spanish capital is so much more than tapas, cheap wine and sunshine

Carved in around the 1750s, the gilded pine sedan chair belonged to Barbara of Portugal, and complete with a squishy velvet set, was used to cart the queen around from room to room in the royal estates.

Post-Covid, like many modern day queens, I’ve long since given up on the type of rib-crushing underpinnings and Pompadour heels made fashionable by the ruling classes of the day.

Still, even exploring the sprawling gallery spanning five centuries of culture over four floors in trainers, I can see the appeal.

Especially for those who may have spent the day tottering about in the type of Jimmy Choos separately on display in an old bank vault at the bougie Galería Canalejas shopping mall, in a city teeming with art that’s not only framable, but wearable and edible too.

Set beside the Royal Palace of Madrid and dug into rock, the remarkable museum (patrimonionacional.es) opened its doors to the public last June, just on time to scratch the itch that was about to be left by the end of Netflix smash The Crown.

But you don’t really have to know your Habsburgs from your Bourbons, or your Philips from your Ferdinands, to enjoy bingeing on the wealth of treasures including paintings, sculptures, tapestries, armour and coaches, squirrelled away by the Spanish monarchy from the Middle Ages right up to today.

If, like me, you’re someone who likes to take the time to drink in a new city, allowing its sights, sounds and smells to percolate, then the words ‘48 hours in’ anywhere may be enough to prompt you to turn the page.

Don’t – just pick a central base, like the Vincci Soho Hotel in the Literary Quarter (where at vinccihoteles.com rooms start from about €200 a night), and you’ll be fine for dandering around for a day or two at a leisurely pace, even if you didn’t check your sedan chair in on Aer Lingus.

The airline jets directly from Dublin to Madrid in just over two and a half hours each day from under €100, making the Spanish capital an attractive choice for a whistlestop getaway for lovers of everything from paintings to pimientos.

Miguel de Cervantes, who penned Don Quixote, is just one of the giants of literature to lend the trendy ‘Las Letras’ district its name, with the house where he lived and died and the Convent of the Trinitarias Descalzas, where his remains were discovered by forensic scientists in 2015, 400 years after his death, among the city’s many stroll-stoppers.

While the would-be knight famously set off from La Mancha on horseback in search of adventure in the epic satire on chivalry, today, tourists barely have to leave the four-star property, only a short trot from the ‘Golden Triangle of Art’ formed by the city’s three best-known galleries: the Prado, Reina Sofia and Thyssen-Bornemisza.

The purpose of art, as Pablo Picasso once said, is washing the dust of daily life off our souls, but wandering through the pretty Plaza de España, lorded over by a stone sculpture of Cervantes, or lush Sabatini Gardens in front of the Royal Palace on a bright day, it almost seems a shame to do that dusting in a museum, with plenty of guided walking tours to choose from at esmadrid.com.

Yet, an exhibition celebrating Picasso: The Sacred and the Profane, or how the artist combined the divine with human in his work such as The Crucifixion, running at the Thyssen during my flying-but-fascinating visit, is €13 and a couple of hours well spent.

Once the second largest private collection in the world, the museum (museothyssen.org), founded by German-Hungarian art collector Heinrich Thyssen, has a mind-bending display of 1,600 paintings, thought to bridge any historical gaps in the nearby Prado and Reina Sofia’s collections.

Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Dali and Hopper are all accounted for, but I was sorry to miss the most recent temporary exhibition giving the oft-overlooked Women Masters, among them Angelica Kauffmann and Clara Peeters, their dues.

From historic sites like Teatro Royal to the newly opened Galería Canalejas in the iconic La Equitativa building, in many ways, the entire cityscape is a canvas which has been added to over the decades and centuries.

Nip up to the El Cielo de Chicote rooftop bar at Hotel Montera to put its broad boulevards, flourishing parks and majestic fountains all into perspective over a chilled cocktail.

Down below on Gran Vía, the city’s most famous street, peppered with shops, hotels, and restaurants, there’s just enough time to pop into Madrid’s newest art space (museogranvia15.com) for a snoop around Okuda San Miguel’s head-spinning ‘Walking Life’ exhibition.

All trippy neon nooks and kaleidoscopic crannies, it’s a reflection on the paths that life offers, and during any to Madrid, one of those paths inevitably leads to chocolate-dipped churros for breakfast or the chunkiest patatas bravas at night.

Art on a plate isn’t in short supply in a city boasting 21 restaurants with at least one Michelin star, but a tapas trail winding through the Huertas and Austrias neighbourhoods after dark is a far more fun way to get a taste for the place – and maybe even understand why Queen Barbara was carried around.

Deirdre’s trip was hosted. Check out spain.info for more or follow @visita_madrid.

This story originally appeared in The Sunday World.