Tetuán & Cuatro Caminos: the working northern barrio
Bravo Murillo top to bottom — the market halls, the migrant kitchens, the Madrid tourists skip. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Plaza de Tetuán de las Victorias
Start at the square that named the barrio — after an 1860 battle in Morocco, when soldiers settled the fields north of the city. There's no grand monument; that's the point. This is a neighbourhood that grew from people, not plans.

2. Calle de Bravo Murillo
The barrio's three-kilometre spine, and the whole walk is really just this street done properly. Walk it south, slowly, reading the shopfronts — every wave of arrivals to Madrid has left a layer here. Cross to the shadier side as the morning warms.

3. Mercado de Maravillas
One of the largest covered food markets in Europe, and almost entirely a local one — hundreds of stalls, no tasting menus, queues of people doing the week's shop. Go in, do a lap, buy fruit. The fishmongers' aisle is the show.

4. The Latin American blocks around Calle de Marqués de Viana
East off the spine, the streets where Madrid's Dominican, Ecuadorian and Colombian communities settled — bakeries, money-transfer shops, restaurants with the menu taped in the window. Lunch here is the real reason to come; pick the busiest room.

5. Calle del General Margallo (the everyday core)
A side street of haberdashers, ferreterías and old bars with the football on — Tetuán with the volume turned down. Wander a block or two off Bravo Murillo here. The barrio is friendliest where it isn't trying.

6. Cuatro Caminos and the Metropolitano
The grand junction where four roads and three metro lines meet, named for the crossing itself. Look up at the curved 1920s Edificio Titanic on the corner. Then down into one of Madrid's oldest stations for the line home.

Tetuán & Cuatro Caminos: the working northern barrio