Madrid for The Time Travellers: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

The 1619 Habsburg square with its frescoed bakery house, built for coronations, bullfights and trials by the Inquisition; the arches are free and the coffee is not.

A royal convent of 1559 still behind a plain wall, full of Habsburg widows' Rubens tapestries; visits are guided and limited, so book a slot.

An 1830 tavern with a zinc bar and bull's head, where the torreznos, callos and battered cod are the order and the house vermouth the drink.

Charles III's palace of 3,000 rooms, begun after the fire of 1734; the throne room, the Stradivari quartet and the old pharmacy are the pieces to look for.

Begun in 1883 and finished in 1993, so the neo-Gothic nave and the modern ceiling disagree; the crypt is quieter than the dome.

Guinness lists it as the oldest restaurant in the world, open since 1725, and the story goes that Goya washed dishes here; order the suckling pig.

The Roman and Islamic Madrid dug out under the Plaza de San Andrés, plus the courtyard well of the city's patron saint; entry is free.

From Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights to Goya's black paintings, walked in order, floor by floor; three hours is enough before the legs end the argument.

A nineteenth-century cocido house where the pot has been cooked on coals since 1870; Madrid's winter history in one lunch, and cash only.

Guernica hangs in room 206; the rest of the floor walks you through Dalí, Miró, Picasso and the Civil War in the order it happened.

Kilometre Zero is on the pavement, and the clock of the Casa de Correos is the one that counts New Year's grapes; the 1808 rising against Napoleon began here.

Seven centuries of painting in one walk, from the Flemish primitives on the top floor down to Hopper; it opens at noon on Mondays.

The café of 1888 where the writers of the Generation of '27 held their tertulias; order a tortilla and a coffee and read the room.