Madrid
A self-guided audio walking tour of Madrid, Spain
This self-guided audio walking tour of Madrid in Madrid, Spain covers 12 narrated stops over roughly 60 minutes and about 4.2 km on foot. Press play in the PodWalk app and each stop is narrated automatically as you arrive — walk at your own pace, online or fully offline. The route runs from Puerta del Sol to Lhardy. Expect a focus on history.
Download free, then play this walk in Madrid — narration starts automatically at each stop, online or off.
The route, stop by stop
Puerta del Sol
Every road in Spain, officially, begins here. Not in a palace, not in a cathedral — in a…
Convent of Las Descalzas Reales
1559. A royal convent rises on this square — not built for monks or friars, but for women of the highest bloodlines in Europe, who chose enclosure over court life, and in doing so, never quite left power…
Museo Los Caños del Peral. Estación de Metro Ópera
Beneath the pavement here, the city keeps its receipts. A plaque on this wall marks where an opera house stood from 1737 to 1817 — eighty years of imported Italian taste, then…
Convento de San Felipe el Real
Imagine the most dangerous place in sixteenth-century Madrid to say something indiscreet. Not a tavern — a convent…
Felipe III
1848. A queen orders a bronze king placed in a square he built — two centuries after his…
Teatro Albéniz
November 2022. Antonio Banderas is directing Stephen Sondheim on a Madrid stage that had been dark for thirteen years. That reopening wasn't just a cultural event — it was the end of a legal fight that nearly erased…
Cine Ideal
November 2022. Antonio Banderas is directing Stephen Sondheim on a Madrid stage that had been dark for thirteen years—a theater that nearly vanished entirely, saved not by official decree but by citizens who fought to…
Corral de comedias de la Cruz
Somewhere beneath this pavement, the boards of a stage once held the first performances of plays that defined an entire civilization's idea of…
Plaza de Santa Ana
The convent that once stood here was demolished on Napoleon's orders—and what replaced it, eventually, was this: open air, café terraces, and two bronze poets watching over the…
Círculo de Bellas Artes
What counts as culture — and who gets to decide — is rarely settled in a museum. More often, it's settled in a membership…
Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando
By 1752, taste in Madrid had stopped being a matter of opinion. It had become a matter of…
Lhardy
1839. A Swiss-born restaurateur named Emilio Huguenin Lhardy opens a dining room just off Sol — and quietly begins rewriting what Madrid thinks sophistication tastes…
These are the opening lines of each stop. The full narration — and the audio — plays in the app.
Madrid walking tour — good to know
- How long is the Madrid walking tour?
- About 60 minutes on foot, covering 12 stops over 4.2 km. You can pause and pick it back up whenever you like.
- What does the Madrid audio tour cover?
- 12 narrated stops, beginning at Puerta del Sol and ending at Lhardy. Each one plays automatically as you reach it.
- Do I need an internet connection or mobile data?
- No. Download the walk once in the PodWalk app and the narration plays fully offline — handy while roaming in Spain. GPS triggers each stop as you arrive.
- Is the Madrid audio tour free?
- Your first walk on PodWalk is free. After that, walks come through one-time passes from $2.99 — there's no subscription and nothing auto-renews.
- Can I do the tour at my own pace?
- Yes. There's no guide and no schedule — start when you want, linger as long as you like, and the next stop plays automatically when you get there.
Walk Madrid with PodWalk
Free to download. Your first walk is free, and you can download this one for fully offline use.