Guided Tour of Madrid of the Austrias and the Historic Center

Great introduction to Madrid

Andrea was very knowledgeable and entertaining. She was also very helpful, offering tips and recommendations around Madrid. She even offered to help with booking restaurants and shows which is above and beyond. The tour began in sol and finished opposite the palace, which even on a hot June day was a very pleasant stroll. Highly recommended.

I promise you that you will learn more on this tour than in your history classes.

Sometimes, it can be intimidating to travel to a city with as much culture and hidden history as Madrid. This is where our guide Andrea comes in! Andrea has the gift of telling historical events in an entertaining and accessible way. If you have little time to learn about the history (and curiosities) of the city, this would be a great starter. Thank you Andrea for that fun afternoon full of culture and historical gossip!

Wonderful guided tour

I attended the tour on May 01, 2024. Andrea (the guide) was amazing, knowledgeable, friendly, funny, and had great energy. Made us fall in love with Madrid even more. Highly recommend it if you’re looking for a great tour guide.

A wonderful experience.

The tour guide Andrea was superb - very knowledgeable, as well as enthusiastic. I have travelled extensively and this experience was right at the top!! Thanks Andrea.

Great historic city tour

I normally do these frre walking tours in every major city I visist, but this tour by Andrea was one of the best. Highly recommend for anyone who has limited time here or wants to learn more about the history of the city.

Fun tour

We had a lovely tour with Camila. She is very energetic and engaging. We learned quite a bit of interesting info and enjoyed our time.

Central Madrid Walking Tour

Dina was an excellent, full of information, and tidbits of related knowledge. She answered lots of questions and quizzed the group from time to time to Braden our understanding,

Fantastic tour, book direct, don’t use Viator.

The tour was fantastic but disappointed to find out we could have done the tour for free if we had researched better. So basically the price we paid was just viator’s commission.

Tour with Esmeralda! Amazing

We had an amazing time with Esmeralda who is not only absolutely brilliant but also really funny and can relate with great detail the differents aspects of the Hasburgs dinasty

Best tour guide ever! Christian was a real expert who made our time fly by. I would repeat this tour it was so wonderful

Our tour guide Christian was absolutely wonderful. His knowledge and passion of the subject made for a wonderful time. We walked and learned so much. Christian made the time fly by with his unique narrative and storytelling. I would recomend this tour with Christian 100%.

Great tour with so much history of Madrid

Esmeralda was awesome! She was very friendly and knowledgable about the city. I learned so much about the city of Madrid and the kings. I would definitely recommend this tour.

Excellent intro to the rich history of Spain and Madrid

Great walking tour of central Madrid that was packed with Spanish history, architecture, and local history. Esmeralda was a fantastic guide, very knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

Andrea was a fantastic guide!

It was a very informative and interesting tour and our guide Andrea was a pleasant and helpful person with a deep knowledge about the history of Madrid. Can highly recommend! Best regards, Sviatlana

History through storytelling

We loved our walking tour! Esme was amazing! She was so knowledgeable about the city and told us the history through stories. She is a great story teller and made the walking tour very fun! Due to our small tour size she also allowed us to stop and certain places for longer period of times and let our group have good input on what we wanted to see too! We loved Esme and recommend her tours to anyone!

Fun and interesting tour with Esme

We had a really nice time exploring one part of the City with Esme. She made it an interesting and informative experience full of historical and quite some fun facts presenting it in a way that you will remember them. She also could answer all our questions.

Fun, factual, interesting walking tour

Esme was a great guide, very knowledgeable and fun. Her stories were interesting and told in a light hearted manner. We found out some fascinating facts and saw some of the more hidden parts of Madrid. Thoroughly recommend. It was a great, well paced tour. Thank you Esme!

Entertaining Tour

Esme made the tour entertaining. She interwove Madrid's stories and fun facts into the historical information about Madrid. It was a very enjoyable walking tour. We highly recommend this to anyone visiting Madrid.

Excellent tour and tour guide!

Very good and informational tour. Unfortunately for our Tour Guide, Esme, another group of 4 did not show - so my group of 4 got a personal and intimate tour. This allowed Esme to adjust parts of the tour for our preferences, which was lovely. She was very knowledgeable of the history, answered all our questions, and conveyed the information in a fun and sometimes dramatic and comical way. We learnt a lot about the history, the royal family, the old city and buildings, and she provided us with recommendations of restaurants and bars to visit, plus other key places to visit during our stay in Madrid. Definitely recommend this walking tour.

Excellent tour worth the time

Dina was a fantastic tour guide. She explained about every site, gave historical information, tidbits of trivia and even pictures of info she explained. She also provided additional names of restaurants and taverns to visit.Her English was perfect! The tour was extremely interesting and included fun stops such as the bar for the special liquor tasting. I definitely would recommend this tour!! FYI the yellow umbrellas you look for to meet the tour guide say "free walking tours" in Puerto de sol

Good introductory tour

Esmeralda our guide told a good story. We gained an overview of the time from King Charles through 3 king Philips and to the next Charles. The history of the buildings was fascinating

I really enjoyed this TOUR!

Dina is an AMAZING guide!!! She had us so intrigued and she really knows her stuff! I think I like history now...😆 MUST DO!!!

Excellent trip with Esme

We were recommended to take a trip with Esme by @migrantmusings @niyatisaxena. It was an excellent trip recommendation. The historical information she provided us was very good. Her language was easy and flowing. I would strongly recommend others wanting a tour in English to go with her.

Great experience but

The tour with Esme was amazing. She knew how to share her knowledge and passion about history and some anecdotes. I didn't appreciate the way payement was handeled (the company requested a minimal tip of 15e which was not indicated on their website).

Perfect start of Madrid visit!

Just perfect!! Unfortunately, we have arrived a bit late so did mot catch the name of the guide, but he was super smart and funny, we really had wonderful time! Big recommendation!

Go with Esmé

One of the better tours I did in the city (interesting period and walking path). I strongly recommend ESMÉ! Less crowded than other tours. They expect 15€.

ESMEE was amazinggg ☀️☀️

We did a tour with Esmee - and she was AMAZING. We loved it so much, she knew so much and it was really fun to listen. BIG RECOMMENDATION!! Thank you Esmee!

Wonderful city, fun background stories

It was both educational and entertaining with Dina our host. This tour is highly recomandable and good fun!..........

Magical Madrid

In the strength of Esme's enlightening and heart felt guided tour this gets 5* from me .. it was worth every penny. I learned so much about Madrid and she bought the city to life. In fact it made me want to come back to Madrid again. We even got treated to a complimentary Sangria enroute and loads of great recommendations. The only thing that confused me was the way we paid. I wasn’t sure whether I had already paid on line. Perhaps it would be better all round if one up front cost was paid when booking.

Great tour

We had the tour with Esme, she was very friendly, knowledgeable and made it an interesting and brilliant tour.

Madrid walking tour

Esmeralda was really knowledgeable and had a funny and easy way to pass the history. Thank you once again

spectacular tour

It was a unique experience with Jose, we did the toro with some friends and it was amazing, we would definitely repeat.

Great tour!

The tour was great! Our tour guide Dina was really nice and knowledgeable. We learned a lot of fun facts, got to try a famous local drink (Madreno) and gave us really good addresses to enjoy during our stay in Madrid. Highly recommend this tour!

Dina is awesome!

I really enjoyed my tour with Dina! Her knowledge was excellent and she had a really lovely manner in the way she delivered it. We visited many really interesting locations and in terms of walkability… it was perfect. The only thing that disappointed me was not the tour which went for around 2.5 hours, it was the fact some people on the tour decided €5 was an appropriate amount to pay her at the end of the tour. That’s €2 an hour for her wonderful service! I was shocked about their stingy behaviour, €10 is still not enough in my opinion but she probably would have been happy with that. Comon people …dig a little deeper and be fair.

Great experience

The tour was awesome and the guide very knowledgeable. We had a great time. It is a very important part of Madrid where a lot of history has been made.

A must :)

This tour was amazing! My tour guide Dina was excellent - some other tourists didn’t turn up and instead of cancelling the tour she was very willing to continue with just me on it which I HUGELY appreciated. She is incredibly knowledgeable, I learnt a lot about Madrid whilst taking in some beautiful views, and we stopped for some croquetas along the way - and what’s a better way to start the day?! Dina was also very friendly. I felt very comfortable talking to her through the tour and it felt like a very wholesome experience to have had as a first time solo traveller! I recommend the tour and thanks to Dina for leading it.

Madrid Austrias

Our guide took us through the most beautiful parts of Austrias and was very engaging all the time. Highly recommended

Alvaro was amazing!!

Alvaro was our guide, great guide very informative and friendly, definitely would recommend!! Great morning out Helena.

Excellent tour of Madrid

Our guide, Alvaro, was excellent, patient, deeply knowledgeable and well informed. I would highly recommend this tour.

Must taken a free tour guided by Alvaro in Madrid!

Alvaro was hell of a guide, He responded every question I had, recommended to all, would definitely repeat next time in Madrid!

Energetic and...

Energetic and enthusiastic guide who really knows his city’s history and wants to share it. We enjoyed our walk.

Superb guide & informative tour

Thank you Melissa we really enjoyed our tour! As a guide Melissa was fun, informative and helpful. The walking tour took us through the streets to many interesting places and we learned about the history with the aid of Melissa’s photos. I would recommend the tour and especially Melissa as a guide. She does a different tour at 5pm too.

Fantastic Tour

Our guide Marcelo was fantastic! We learned so much about Madrid and it’s history. Every single person was engaged throughout the entire tour. He did a wonderful job giving us a lot of information without it being overwhelming. Would highly recommend!

Great tour guide. Excellent job

I paid $20 through viator and then was told by the guide it was a yellow umbrella free tour and he was an aspiring student earning tips from the tour. Where did the viator money go? The tour guide was great. I tipped him well. Better off going directly to yellow umbrella tour and skip the middle man.

Informed historical tour

I would recommend Alvaro's historical walking tour "Madrid of the Austrias" for your first day in Madrid. It gives a sense of the development of Madrid and the history of the various early monarchs. Alvaro was also able to answer totally unrelated questions, as he is very familiar with other aspects of the city, and had recommendations for markets, restaurants and museums. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Wear your walking shoes as it's 2 hours wandering busy streets, back alleys and plazas.

really good

it was really good, marceli is amazing, very informative and pleasant to talk to. he recommended really good places for food

Ripped off

The booking through Trip Advisor was deceiving. This was marketed as a paid tour, and we paid in advance through Trip Advisor, but when we showed up for the tour, it was advertised as a free tour, and that the tour guide is paid in tips only. I confirmed with my tour guide that she did not receive any of the money that we paid in advance,.so my.questiin is, what happened to that money? We ended up laying twice, once to Trip.Adcisor,.and once to the tour guide. The tour itself was good fine, giving this one start due to the false advertisement, confusion, and double payment.

Marcelis was an amazing...

Marcelis was an amazing guide and I highly recommend him. He was very knowledgeable and accommodating.

Great walking tour

Marcello was a great tour guide. It was fun and operated at a good pace. We were given lots of interesting facts about Madrid and Spanish history. I would highly recommend this tour.

Muy bueno!

Camilla had amazing knowledge and conducted a very interactive and interesting tour. Highly recommend.

Marceli had a knowledge of the city far beyond his years!

My daughter and I took a tour with Marceli and he was absolutely amazing, he had so much knowledge of Madrid and Spain in general! It was a small tour and there was a college professor in the group almost quizzing him, he handled it in the most graceful way while keeping to the facts and it showed his depth in all things Madrid. So glad we chose this tour and had the opportunity to learn about this amazing city!