Royal Palace of Madrid

Which ticket, and the free slot worth knowing

General admission is about €14 (€8 reduced for 5–16s, over-65s and students; under-5s free), and you walk a fixed one-way route through roughly two dozen of the palace’s 3,418 rooms — the Throne Room under Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s ceiling fresco, the Gasparini Room, the Royal Chapel and the separate Royal Armoury, which holds armour worn by Spanish kings since the 13th century and is the bit most people underrate.

There’s a free slot Monday to Thursday in the last two hours before closing — 16:00–18:00 from October to March, 17:00–19:00 from April to September — but read the small print before you bank on it: Patrimonio Nacional restricts it to EU citizens, EU residents and work-permit holders, and Latin American citizens. Post-Brexit a UK passport on its own no longer counts, so unless you hold EU residency you’ll be paying the €14 like everyone else. (It’s also self-guided, the busiest rooms of the day, and can’t be pre-booked, so it’s no great loss.) To skip the ticket-office queue — which runs 60–90 minutes from late morning in peak season — book a timed or skip-the-line ticket online instead. Either way you still pass airport-style security, so budget 20–30 minutes for that.

Is the interior worth the €14?

Aim for 10:00 sharp or after 16:00, ideally Tuesday to Thursday; between 11:00 and 14:00 is queue central, and weekends and the summer peak are worst. November to February has the thinnest crowds. The palace is a five-minute walk from Ópera metro (Lines 2 and 5), so it pairs naturally with Plaza Mayor and the Mercado de San Miguel a few streets east. Time it for a Wednesday or Saturday and you can watch the free Changing of the Guard in the Plaza de la Armería (11:00–14:00, or 10:00–12:00 in July and August).

Go inside if you like gilded staterooms and don’t mind a fixed route — the Throne Room and Armoury justify the €14 (don’t count on the free slot as a UK visitor — it’s an EU-residents perk). If palace interiors bore you, the courtyard, the cathedral opposite and the guard ceremony are all free and may be plenty. Allow an hour and a half to two hours, and don’t stack it against the Prado the same day — Madrid’s big sights reward spacing out.