Madrid Capital City of Spain. Tourism in Madrid Spain. Best Tourist Sites Madrid Spain.

Madrid stands in the exact centre of the Peninsula that is Spain on the western side of Europe between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. France and The Bay of Biscay are to the north and Portugal along its south western border. Madrid is built on the great bare plateau of New Castile at an altitude of 2,000 feet. It was only a rather small uninteresting town in quite a marshy region when Philip II decided to make it the centre of his court in 1561 after years of the court moving constantly from city to city.

After Philip II made it his permanent home it grew to become the greatest capital of the most important empire in the world.

Madrid is blessed with a clear atmosphere and the sun shines throughout the year. In winter it warms the children at play in the gardens and streets as well as the old folk taking their ease on the benches by the walls. In the summer blinds have to be kept down during the day. Then a cool breeze sweeps the over heated streets, it is the pine scented breeze of the Guadarrama.

From the 17th century and especially during the 18th, Madrid began to assume the appearance of a capital. Old Madrid, therefore is on the small side but has continued to grow so that in 2011 it had attained a population of 3,277,034.

As the city grew many of the buildings in Madrid featured bright façades with white exteriors framed by red brick, with flowered terraces. Over the years Madrid has acquired taller buildings but has still retained it's feel and character as a very Spanish city.

Even in the newest avenues, studded with bars and cinemas, something still remains of the Madrid of past centuries.

Reasons to visit Madrid have to include two attractions that cannot be found anywhere else: an exciting way of life, combining the picturesque side of Old Spain together with modern thoughts and ideas, and then there is The Prado.

So visit Madrid and take stock of the people, take a seat for an hour on the terrace of a café in the Avenida José Antonio (Gran Viá), or the Calle de Alcalá, between the cross roads of Calle de Sevilla and the Plaze de la Cibeles, and then walk around the popular districts. Then it will be time to go to The Prado, where the great masters of Spanish painting have left the most extraordinary and faithful testimony of a nation which, through the centuries, has changed only in outward appearance.