Matadero Madrid is the best thing the city did with its industrial past: a vast 1910s municipal slaughterhouse, brick hall after brick hall, kept whole and turned into one of Europe's largest arts complexes. The trick is that almost none of it was demolished — the killing floors became reading rooms, the cold-store became a cinema.
About three kilometres, best in the afternoon when the courtyards are alive. From Legazpi, the working square the place grew out of, walk in through the brick gates to Nave 16 and the central yards — open to wander, ticket or no ticket. The Cineteca shows what nobody else will; the Casa del Lector threads walkways over the old slaughter floor.
You don't have to step inside a single gallery. The conversion is the show: cast iron left bare, tilework kept, the industrial logic legible everywhere.
Then west to the Puente de Praga and down to the Manzanares, where you turn north along the reclaimed bank. A flat, short finish to Pirámides and Metro 5 — the brick mass of the slaughterhouse holding the river behind you.
