Madrid Attraction Tours: Prices and Free Days
Madrid’s guided attractions run from free to 46 EUR for the same two hours of your day, and the price has very little to do with the quality. A ducal palace with a Goya collection gives away tickets every Monday morning. A 1929 bullring charges 7 EUR for a 50-minute tour with an eight-language audio guide. The two football stadiums, meanwhile, are separated by more than 20 EUR for broadly similar walks around a pitch.
What the guided attractions cost
| Attraction | Price | Cheapest way in |
|---|---|---|
| Museo Taurino, Las Ventas | free | walk up, capacity limited |
| Las Ventas Tour | 7 EUR | includes the museum |
| Palacio de Liria | 15 EUR self-guided | free Mondays 10:00 |
| Atleti Tour and Museum | around 20 EUR | self-paced, book online |
| Bernabéu self-guided | 25 to 37 EUR | online, 3 to 5 EUR cheaper |
| Bernabéu guided | 46 EUR adult, 35 child | no discount route |
| El Escorial | 14 EUR, 7 reduced | free Wed and Sun afternoons |
| Aranjuez Palace | 9 EUR basic, 13 fuller | gardens always free |
| Valle de Cuelgamuros | 9 EUR, 4 reduced | free Wed and Sun afternoons |
Palacio de Liria, and the free Monday nobody books
This is the House of Alba’s Madrid seat on Calle Princesa, still a family home, with a collection that includes Goya and a Gutenberg Bible. Self-guided entry is 15 EUR, 13.50 EUR reduced, free under five; a 90-minute guided tour in Spanish is 38 EUR. Self-guided hours are Monday 10:00 to 15:00 and Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 20:00.
The money-saving detail: entry is free on Mondays at 10:00, in partnership with the city council, and those tickets are released the previous Monday at midday on the palace’s own site, capped at two per person. They go in minutes, so set a reminder rather than hoping. Booking is at the Palacio de Liria site . It is a different building from the Palacio de Linares over at Cibeles, which is now Casa de América.
Las Ventas at 7 EUR
The Museo Taurino is free and capacity-limited. The Las Ventas Tour is 7 EUR, runs about 50 minutes, includes the museum, and comes with an audio guide in Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. The route takes in the Puerta de Cuadrillas, the chapel, the infirmary corridor, the callejón and the sand. Hours are 10:00 to 19:00 from May to October with last entry 18:15, and 10:00 to 18:00 from November to April with last entry 17:30; they are posted at the bullring’s tour site .
Bullfighting itself is legal and active here, with a season running roughly 22 March to October and the Feria de San Isidro from 8 May to 7 June 2026. Corrida seats are priced by sun and shade, from about 25 EUR at the back to past 120 EUR at the front and 300 to 400 EUR for barrera seats at the major fights. The 7 EUR tour is the cheap way to see the neo-Mudéjar building without attending one.
Which stadium tour gives more for the money?
The Atleti Tour and Museum does, if you are counting euros. Adult admission sits around 20 EUR and well under the Bernabéu, for roughly an hour on the stadium route and another in the 1,400 square metre Territorio Atleti museum, covering the first-team dressing room, the mixed zone, the tunnel, the benches and the presidential box. The stadium is the Riyadh Air Metropolitano as of 2025, after spells as the Wanda and then the Cívitas. One caveat straight from the club: from roughly 19 May to early August the pitch is lifted out for concerts and the route changes, so check the Atleti tour page before booking a summer slot.
The Santiago Bernabéu Tour is the bigger spectacle and priced as a ladder rather than a number: 25 to 37 EUR self-guided depending on date and whether the ticket is fixed-time or flexible, 19 to 25 EUR for children, 46 EUR for the official guided tour with children at 35 EUR, and 60 to 120 EUR for premium and VIP formats. Online saves roughly 3 to 5 EUR over the box office. Hours run about 09:30 to 19:00 Monday to Saturday and 10:00 to 18:30 on Sunday, last entry 90 minutes before close, with details on the club’s own site . The stadium reopened in 2024 after a rebuild of around 1.7 billion EUR that added a retractable roof, a 360-degree interior screen and a retractable pitch.
Match days are a partial closure, not a full one: from noon the day before kick-off until the day after, the dressing rooms and benches shut while the museum, trophy room and panoramic views stay open.
El Escorial, Aranjuez and the state-run sites
El Escorial is 14 EUR, 7 EUR reduced, closed Mondays, open 10:00 to 18:00 October to March and 10:00 to 19:00 April to September. Two rules matter here: advance online purchase is mandatory as of 2026, there is no walk-up ticket office, and since 17 February 2026 the visitor entrance is on the West Façade at the Patio de Reyes, not where older directions send you. Free windows run Wednesday and Sunday 15:00 to 18:00 in winter and to 19:00 in summer for EU and Ibero-American citizens, and those now need booking in advance too. Inside are Philip II’s monastery-palace, the basilica, the Royal Pantheon holding almost every Spanish monarch since Charles V, and the Royal Library.
Aranjuez Royal Palace is 9 EUR basic or 13 EUR for the fuller guided visit through the official salons and private rooms, closed Mondays, and it includes the Museo de Falúas Reales with the royal barges used on the Tagus. The Jardín del Príncipe and Jardín de la Isla are free and open to everyone, which makes Aranjuez the cheapest good half day out of Madrid.
Valle de Cuelgamuros
The Valle de Cuelgamuros, renamed from the Valley of the Fallen in 2022 under the Democratic Memory Law, is Spain’s largest mass grave: more than 33,000 bodies were brought here from across the country after the Civil War, many without their families’ knowledge or consent. Exhumations began in 2023 and by August 2026 had recovered 602 bodies, 25 of them identified and returned to families. Franco’s remains were removed in 2019 and José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s in 2023, so neither is buried here. Entry is 9 EUR, 4 EUR reduced, closed Mondays, and the funicular to the cross is closed indefinitely. The site itself carries almost no interpretive signage, so read before you go. Tickets come from Patrimonio Nacional’s official channel .
Public transport between El Escorial and Cuelgamuros, about 9 km apart, is thin, which is why combined El Escorial coach tours exist. Treat them as a transport fix rather than a discount.
For the free and self-guided alternatives see the walking tours guide , and for the monument prices in town the Madrid sightseeing guide . Staying near a Cercanías station cuts the cost of every one of these day runs, so compare rates near Atocha and Chamartín .
Set a calendar alert for Monday at 12:00, one week before the Monday you want. That is when the free Liria tickets appear, and it is the best-value hour in Madrid.