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Madrid is one of Spain's most popular destinations, and its well known for the quantity of cultural related attractions and monuments that the city has embraced.

Madrid is the capital and largest city in Spain, as well as in the province and the autonomous community of the same name. It is located on the river Manzanares in the center of the country. Due to its geographical location and history, Madrid has been considered the financial and political center of the Iberian Peninsula.

Madrid became Spain's capital simply through its geographical position at the centre of Iberia. When Felipe II moved the seat of government here in 1561 his aim was to create a symbol of the unification and centralization of the country, and a capital from which he could receive the fastest post and communications from each corner of the nation. The site itself had few natural advantages - it is 300km from the sea on a 650-metre-high plateau, freezing in winter, burning in summer - and it was only the determination of successive rulers to promote a strong central capital that ensured Madrid's survival and development.

Nonetheless, it was a success, and today Madrid is a vast, predominantly modern city, with a population of some three million and growing. The journey in - through a stream of concrete-block suburbs - isn't pretty, but the streets at the heart of the city are a pleasant surprise, with pockets of medieval buildings and narrow, atmospheric alleys, dotted with the oddest of shops and bars, and interspersed with eighteenth-century Bourbon squares. By comparison with the historic cities of Spain - Toledo, Salamanca, Sevilla, Granada - there may be few sights of great architectural interest, but the monarchs did acquire outstanding picture collections, which formed the basis of the Prado museum. This has long ensured Madrid a place on the European art tour, and the more so since the 1990s arrival - literally down the street - of the Reina Sofía and Thyssen-Bornemisza galleries, state-of-the-art homes to fabulous arrays of modern Spanish painting (including Picasso's Guernica ) and European and American masters.

As you get to grips with the place you soon realize that it's the inhabitants - the madrileños - that are the capital's key attraction: hanging out in the traditional cafés or the summer terrazas, packing the lanes of the Sunday Rastro flea market, or playing hard and very, very late in a thousand bars , clubs, discos and tascas . Whatever Barcelona or San Sebastián might claim, the Madrid scene, immortalized in the movies of Pedro Almodóvar, remains the most vibrant and fun in the country. The city is also in better shape than for many years past, after a £500-million refurbishment for its role as 1992 European Capital of Culture and the ongoing impact of a series of urban rehabilitation schemes - funded jointly by the European Union and local government - in the older barrios (districts) of the city. Improvements are also being made to the transport network, with extensions to the metro, the construction of new ring roads and the excavation of a series of road tunnels designed to bring relief to the city's overcrowded streets.

The Aeropuerto de Barajas (tel 913 058 343) is 16km east of the city, at the end of Avenida de América (the NII road). It is in the process of being extended and modernized and now has three interconnecting terminals: T1 for nearly all international flights ( vuelos internacionales ); T2 for domestic flights ( nacionales ) plus some of Iberia's flights from continental Europe; T3 for the Puente Aéreo (the air shuttle with Barcelona).

From the airport, the new metro link takes you from T2 via Line 8 into the centre in about thirty minutes (daily 6am-1.30am, 2.30am on Fri & Sat), with a change at Mar de Cristal (Line 4). A more direct route straight to Nuevos Minsterios, where check-in facilities are planned, is in the works and will cut the journey time to about fifteen minutes. The route by road to central Madrid is more variable, depending on rush-hour traffic, and can take anything from twenty minutes to an hour. Outside the terminal, there is a shuttle bus every ten to fifteen minutes (5.17am-1.51am) to an underground terminal in the central Plaza Colón, with pedestrian entrance from the c/Goya or Metro Serrano. If your plane arrives outside these times, there should be additional special connecting bus services. Taxis are always available outside, too, and cost around to the centre, unless you get stuck in traffic.

Half a dozen or so car rental companies have stands at the airport and can generally supply clients with maps and directions. Other airport facilities include 24-hour currency exchange, a post office, left luggage lockers in T1 and T2, a RENFE office for booking train tickets (daily 8am-9pm), a chemist, a tourist office and hotel reservations desk.

The clean and highly efficient metro is by far the quickest way of getting around Madrid, serving most places you're likely to want to get to. It runs from 6am until 1.30am (Fri & Sat until 2.30am); the flat fare is for nearly all journeys, or for a ten-trip ticket ( bono de diez viajes ), which can be used on buses too. Lines are colour-coded, and the direction of travel is indicated by the name of the terminus station. Note that some stations or sections may be subject to periodic closures as a result of the modernization and extension programme which is currently underway. You can get a free colour map of the system ( plano del metro ) at any station.

The region of Madrid has a Mediterranean climate that manifests itself with fresh winters that often experience temperatures lower than 8 °C. Summer tends to be warm with temperatures that consistently surpass 30 °C in July and that can often reach 40 °C. Due to Madrid's high altitude and dry climate, nightly temperatures tend to be fresher, leading to a lower average in the summer months. However, the daily oscillation of the weather conditions is lesser in the center of the city, but is far more noticeable in the outskirts of Madrid, where frosts are more common in winter and summer nights are usually pleasantly cool, as opposed to the often oppresive heat in the inner-city areas. Precipitation, although very limited, can be observed all throughout the year except during summer. Winters also tend to be relatively dry, most rainfall occuring in the autumn and spring seasons.

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