San Antonio de la Florida: Goya's ceiling and the river west
Goya's frescoes over his own tomb, the Manzanares bank, and the slope back to Príncipe Pío. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida
Start here, early, before anyone else. Goya painted the dome and vaults in 1798 — a miracle scene full of ordinary Madrid faces leaning over a painted railing. Lie back on a bench and look up. Free, small, and one of the great rooms in Europe.

2. Goya's tomb
The painter is buried in the same chapel, beneath his own ceiling — though the skull went missing somewhere between his death in Bordeaux and the reburial here. A strange, fitting place for him. Stand a moment; then go next door.

3. The twin ermita
There are two identical chapels side by side — the second built in 1925 so services could carry on without wearing out the Goya. Most people never clock the trick. Walk between them and notice you've been in the wrong one for the frescoes if you have.

4. Madrid Río riverbank
Down to the Manzanares, buried under a motorway for decades and freed in 2011 as a long green park along both banks. Turn south along the water. After the chapel's intensity, the open river is exactly the right exhale.

5. Puente de los Franceses
The 19th-century railway bridge upstream, a Civil War front line where the city held the river in 1936. Cross under or over it for the view back along the water. The arches and the willows make the prettiest stretch of the bank.

6. The Príncipe Pío slope
Climb back up the wooded slope toward the old station — Príncipe Pío was Madrid's grand 19th-century terminus, now a hub with the metro underneath. End in the iron-and-glass concourse. Line 6, 10 or the cercanías take you anywhere.

San Antonio de la Florida: Goya's ceiling and the river west