Madrid Sightseeing: Free Entry Days and Prices
You can see most of what people come to Madrid for without paying for any of it, as long as you are willing to plan around three different free windows on three different days. The catch is that two of the three still need a reserved ticket even though they cost nothing, and all three are queued. Get that right and a serious sightseeing week here costs the price of a transport pass.
The free windows, in one table
| Museum | Free window | Ticket needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Prado | Mon to Sat 18:00 to 20:00, Sun and holidays 17:00 to 19:00 | yes, same day |
| Reina Sofía | Mon and Wed to Sat 19:00 to 21:00, Sun 12:30 to 14:30 | yes, online |
| Thyssen | every Monday 12:00 to 16:00 | no ticket at all |
| Royal Palace | last two hours Mon to Thu, EU and Ibero-American visitors | box office only |
The Prado’s free slot is the evening, permanent collection only, and a same-day reservation is still required, so it is not a walk-up. The Reina Sofía’s needs a free ticket booked online. The Thyssen’s Monday window has no ticket office open at all: you walk up and you get in until capacity fills, and unusually it covers the temporary exhibitions too. The Royal Palace window cannot be pre-booked and needs ID or proof of residence at the desk.
What the three museums cost if you pay
The Prado is 15 EUR, or 7.50 EUR reduced, free for under-18s and EU students under 25, and it does not close on any weekday. Two to three hours covers Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Goya’s Black Paintings and The Third of May 1808, and Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Current pricing sits on the Prado’s own site .
The Reina Sofía is 12 EUR and closes on Tuesdays, the only one of the three with a full weekday closure, so there is no free option that day. Guernica hangs in Room 205.10 of the Sabatini Building. Its own advice is that the crush falls between 10:00 and 12:00 and again at 19:00 when the free window opens, with 14:00 to 18:00 the quiet stretch. Hours and free days are published at the Reina Sofía ticket page .
The Thyssen is 14 EUR, 10 EUR reduced. Monday is a noon-to-four day and free; the rest of the week runs 10:00 to 19:00, to 21:00 in July and August, and Saturdays to 23:00, which is the longest evening any major Madrid museum keeps. Check the Thyssen’s hours and prices before you build a Monday around it.
If you would rather pay once, the Paseo del Arte card is 32.80 EUR for one visit to each of the three, valid a year. Three separate tickets add up to about 41 EUR.
Royal Palace: 18 EUR, and what the ticket includes
General admission is 18 EUR, 9 EUR reduced; a guided visit is 26 EUR, 17 EUR reduced. It is Europe’s largest functioning royal palace by floor area at roughly 135,000 square metres and more than 3,400 rooms, used for state ceremonies rather than as a home: the royal family moved out in 1931 and Felipe VI lives at the Zarzuela Palace, which the public cannot visit.
The ticket covers the state rooms and the Royal Armoury, reopened in April 2026 after a two-year conservation overhaul, with about 2,500 pieces on show from a collection of more than 7,000. The Royal Kitchen and the Gallery of the Royal Collections are separate tickets, though a 24 EUR combined Palace and Gallery ticket exists and the Gallery half stays valid for seven days. Hours and the free-window rules are on the Patrimonio Nacional ticket page . Skip-the-line options are sold through the usual Royal Palace ticket listings if the queue matters more than the 8 EUR.
The Sabatini Gardens outside are free, and so is the nave of the Almudena Cathedral next door, on a voluntary 1 EUR donation, 10:00 to 19:30 daily outside services. The cathedral’s museum, sacristy, chapterhouse and dome are a combined 7 EUR, 5 EUR reduced, 3 EUR student ticket, and this is the trap: Monday to Saturday mornings only, 10:00 to 14:30, last entry around 14:00, never Sundays and never afternoons. The dome sits more than 70 metres up and is reached on foot from inside the museum.
Which viewpoint is cheapest?
Mirador Madrid, on the eighth floor of the Palacio de Cibeles, is 3 EUR or 2 EUR reduced and free under six. It runs timed 30-minute slots capped around 50 people and closes on Mondays. That undercuts the Círculo de Bellas Artes roof at 6 EUR and the Riu Plaza España 360º bar at 5 to 10 EUR, and CentroCentro on the floors below is free.
The free sights that are genuinely free
- Temple of Debod, a second-century-BCE Egyptian temple gifted by Egypt in 1968, free, Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 to 20:00 and closed Mondays including bank holidays. Capacity is limited and a free timed reservation through the city’s Debod page is worth having at weekends. Sunset moves from about 17:30 in winter to past 21:00 in high summer.
- Retiro Park, no gates, roughly 06:00 to 24:00. The Palacio de Cristal is behind scaffolding while all 5,000 of its glass panes are replaced, wrapped for the whole of 2026 in a printed textile artwork, and due to reopen around summer 2027. The Estanque Grande, the 1877 Fallen Angel statue, the Rosaleda, the Palacio de Velázquez and the Alfonso XII colonnade are all open and all free.
- El Rastro, Sundays and holidays 09:00 to 15:00, free to browse.
- Muralla Árabe, about 120 metres of ninth-century fortress wall behind the cathedral, declared a National Monument in 1954.
- Plaza Mayor, completed in 1619 and largely rebuilt by Juan de Villanueva in the 1790s after three fires. The Casa de la Panadería murals are from 1992.
- Puerta del Sol, with the Km 0 plaque, the 1935 Tío Pepe sign and the four-metre bear-and-strawberry-tree bronze unveiled in 1967.
Transport maths worth doing before you arrive
A Metro single is tiered, not flat: 1.50 EUR for five stations or fewer, rising to 2.00 EUR at ten or more. The ten-trip Metrobús is 7.30 EUR. Every one of those must be loaded onto a Tarjeta Multi, a 2.50 EUR card that is not itself a fare, which catches out anyone expecting to buy a paper ticket. The Abono Turístico Zone A runs 10.30 EUR for one day up to 43.20 EUR for seven, and it waives the 3.00 EUR airport supplement.
The same product sold as the Madrid City Card is that transport pass with a discount booklet attached, at the same price. It gives no free entry to the Prado, the Reina Sofía, the Thyssen or the Royal Palace.
Pair this with the Madrid walking tours guide for the free routes between these sights, or the 3 day Madrid itinerary to sequence them. If you are staying near the Paseo del Prado you can walk the whole Golden Triangle, so compare central rates before paying for a zone you will not use.
Plan your Monday backwards from noon: the Thyssen is free from 12:00, the Reina Sofía is open, and Debod and Mirador Madrid are both shut. That one sentence saves more money than any pass sold in this city.