Barrio de Salamanca: the elegant grid
The 19th-century grid Madrid built for money — luxury Serrano, the galleries, the Lázaro Galdiano. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Calle de Serrano
The barrio's spine and its shopfront: Loewe, the Spanish houses, the global names, all in cut-stone buildings with doormen. You don't have to buy anything — walk it for the architecture above the windows, which is where the money first went in the 1860s.

2. Calle de José Ortega y Gasset
Cut east along the cross-street the locals call the milla de oro, the golden mile — the densest run of luxury in Spain. Two minutes of window-front, then turn back north; the point is made quickly.

3. The gallery cluster around Calle de Claudio Coello
Salamanca's contemporary-art quarter, a scatter of dealers in the side streets — names change, so step into whichever doors are open. Most shows are free and most are quiet on a weekday afternoon.

4. Calle de Velázquez
The grid's grandest residential avenue, wide and tree-lined, the apartment blocks all balconies and stone. Walk a few blocks north simply to feel the scale the developers were aiming at — this is the barrio at its most confident.

5. Museo Lázaro Galdiano
A financier's mansion stuffed with the art he hoarded — a Goya or two, a Bosch, Hispano-Flemish panels, ivories and enamels, all in the rooms he lived among. The least-crowded great collection in Madrid. Go up to the painted ceilings.

6. Calle de Serrano, north end
Drift back to Serrano at its quieter top, where the shops thin and the embassies begin. Gregorio Marañón is a block west when you're done — the cleanest exit off the grid.

Barrio de Salamanca: the elegant grid