The Plaza Mayor anchors Habsburg Madrid - a rectangular space of 129 by 94 meters, enclosed by four-story buildings with uniform facades and 237 balconies overlooking the cobblestones below. The plaza opened in 1619 and immediately became the city's center of public spectacle: bullfights, executions, royal celebrations, the Inquisition's autos-da-fe. The buildings have burned and been rebuilt three times; the current facades date from 1790.

From the Plaza Mayor, narrow streets spread through what was once the entire city. The Puerta del Sol, the geographic center of Spain from which all distances are measured, marks the eastern edge of the Habsburg core. The Royal Palace - actually Bourbon, built after fire destroyed the Habsburg Alcazar in 1734 - anchors the west. Between them, the crooked streets and small plazas preserve a human scale that subsequent expansion abandoned. The tapas bars and tabernas of the old center fill each evening with crowds eating small plates and drinking wine; the tradition of going from bar to bar, one tapa at each, reflects a city built for walking.

The Museo del Prado holds what is arguably the world's greatest collection of European art - certainly the greatest collection of Spanish painting, and masterpieces from every school that Spanish kings admired. The building was designed as a natural science museum, opened to display the royal collection in 1819, and expanded repeatedly as donations accumulated. Over 8,000 paintings are catalogued; a fraction are displayed.

Velazquez's Las Meninas occupies the central gallery - the painting that redefined what painting could do, the artist depicting himself painting the Spanish royal family in a composition that seems to include the viewer. Goya fills rooms with his trajectory from courtly portraits to the Black Paintings of his deaf final years, Saturn devouring his children. El Greco's elongated saints, Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights (purchased by Philip II), Rubens by the dozen, Titian by the score. The collection reflects royal taste and Habsburg reach - art acquired from the Netherlands, Italy, Flanders, wherever Spain ruled. The empire is gone; the paintings remain.

Madrid held for nearly three years during the Spanish Civil War, besieged by Franco's forces from November 1936 until the city finally fell in March 1939. 'No pasaran' - they shall not pass - became the Republican slogan as Madrilenos endured bombardment, food shortages, and the chaos of a government that relocated to Valencia while militias defended the streets. The International Brigades fought in the Casa de Campo; the University City became a battlefield.

The siege transformed urban warfare. The world saw for the first time what modern weapons could do to civilian populations - the bombing of cities that would escalate through the World War to come. The Gran Via, hit repeatedly, was renamed Avenida de los Obuses - Avenue of the Shells. Hemingway covered the war from the Hotel Florida, writing dispatches about a conflict that seemed to preview a larger catastrophe. Franco's victory brought forty years of dictatorship; the scars healed slowly if at all. Madrid in 2026 still argues about mass graves, still debates how to remember a war whose wounds never fully closed.

When Franco died in November 1975, Madrid exploded. The cultural movement called La Movida Madrilena - roughly 'the Madrid Scene' - erupted from decades of repression, combining punk rock, avant-garde film, extravagant fashion, and pharmaceutical experimentation into a celebration of everything the dictatorship had suppressed. The filmmaker Pedro Almodovar emerged from La Movida; the photographer Alberto Garcia-Alix documented it; the neighborhoods of Malasana and Chueca became laboratories for reinvention.

The movement burned out by the late 1980s, consumed by the AIDS epidemic and the inevitable professionalizing of rebellion. But it reshaped Madrid's self-image, transforming a conservative capital into a city that saw itself as creative, transgressive, alive. The nightlife that keeps Madrilenos out until dawn has roots in La Movida's rejection of the early bedtimes the dictatorship encouraged. Malasana still trades on its bohemian reputation, though the squats have become boutiques. Madrid learned from La Movida that freedom could be its identity; the lesson proved more durable than the movement itself.

Madrid runs on a schedule that baffles visitors. Lunch begins at 2 PM and stretches to 4; dinner rarely starts before 10. The afternoon siesta, while largely abandoned in practice, structures the day into morning work, midday break, afternoon work, evening play. Shops close between 2 and 5; the streets empty in the afternoon heat; the city wakes again as evening approaches.

The rhythm reflects climate and culture: the Castilian plateau bakes in summer, when temperatures routinely exceed 35 degrees, and the sensible response is to avoid the worst heat. But the schedule persists even in winter, even in air-conditioned offices, because Madrilenos have organized social life around it. The paseo - the evening walk - fills the streets with families and friends as temperatures drop. The terrazas - outdoor cafe tables - crowd the plazas until midnight. The restaurants fill at 10, the clubs at 2, the churreria near Puerta del Sol serves chocolate con churros to people ending nights that others are beginning. Madrid lives late because it learned that the best hours come after dark.