Carabanchel: the artist studios and the park
Madrid's southern barrio reinventing itself — galleries in old workshops, a hilltop park, real street life. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. The Carabanchel warehouse-studio cluster
Start among the converted industrial units west of the metro, where cheap floor space pulled the artists out from the centre — open-studio weekends, project spaces, a scene the rest of Madrid is only now noticing. Check what's open before you come; access is by event, not by walking in.

2. Calle de General Ricardos
The barrio's working high street — bakeries, hardware shops, bars where the menu is whatever's written on the board. Walk a stretch of it. This is the Carabanchel the studios moved into, not a backdrop they invented.

3. Parque de la Emperatriz María de Austria
The big green lung on the hill, terraced and shaded, with views back over the rooftops toward the city. Climb to the top path and take the bench with the best line of sight. On a weekend afternoon it's all families and dog-walkers.

4. Vista Alegre and the old finca walls
Toward Vista Alegre, the surviving walls and gateways of the royal estate that gave the area its name — a 19th-century pleasure-ground swallowed by the city. Read the grand stone against the ordinary streets around it; that contrast is the barrio.

5. Calle de la Oca
A quiet residential street that catches the late light, low blocks and balconies and the odd mural. Wander it slowly. The point of Carabanchel isn't a single sight; it's the texture of a place still being made.

6. Plaza near Vista Alegre metro
End on one of the squares by the Vista Alegre stop — a horchata or a caña at a pavement table while the barrio does its early-evening lap. Then Line 5 back into town. You'll have seen a Madrid most visitors never reach.

Carabanchel: the artist studios and the park