Madrid Río: the riverside park
The buried motorway turned park: the Toledo bridge, the slaughterhouse, and the beach-fountains. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Puente de Toledo
Start on the great baroque bridge, all granite pinnacles and saints, built in the 1720s to carry the road south. Walk it for the span, then drop to the riverbank below — from down here you read the whole arc against the water. The traffic it once carried now runs underground.

2. Matadero Madrid
The brick pavilions of the old municipal slaughterhouse, now the city's biggest arts centre. You don't have to go into a show; the courtyards are open and the scale of the place is the point. A coffee in the central yard sets you up for the river.

3. Playa de las Tablas fountains
The shallow jet-fountains set into the paving, where children run through the water all summer. Sit on the edge with an ice cream and watch; it's the most purely happy stretch of the whole park. Dry and quiet out of season, still worth the pause.

4. Puente Monumental de Arganzuela
Dominique Perrault's spiralling steel-ribbon footbridge, two cones twisting over the river. Walk the upper deck for the view back to the city, then come down the other side. The structure is the attraction; cross it slowly.

5. Pinar de la Salud / riverside pines
The planted slope of umbrella pines climbing away from the water — shade when the afternoon turns hot, and the closest the flat river park comes to woodland. A good place to slow the pace before the last stretch south.

6. Huerta de la Partida and Legazpi
The reconstructed orchards near the southern end, fruit trees in formal rows where the riverbank widens. Walk through them to Legazpi, where Metro 3 and 6 take you back. The end of the river park, and a quieter one than the start.

Madrid Río: the riverside park