Come Darkness, Come Light Design

From November 25, 2011 until January 6, 2012

Artistic Christmas-shopping or a modernistic New Year's Eve-celebration?! Since 2003 our mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón transforms the Dark Days by magic into an enlightened event: this year 3,8 million bulbs shine their light on the city during 230 hours.

What's new? Like previous years fashion designers (like Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada), architects (like Ben Busche) and graphic artists signed for the design. We invite you on a luminous evening stroll from Plaza Mayor and Sol through Gran Vía and Hortaleza to Plaza de la Independencia and the Salamanca-barrio...

Dazzling guaranteed!

Festibal (with the B from Bike)

Don't know what to do on your public holiday this Wednesday November 9? Come and have a look at Matadero, where you will be welcomed by a wide range of activities concentrated around the theme BICYCLE in a "Festival to celebrate the cleanest, most efficient and most fun means of transport" from 10 in the morning until 9 in the evening with a market, debate, movie, round tables, concerts AND of course, the exhibition "What's normal is very strange"...


Website of Festibal (Matadero)

Cook Spanish dishes with... Roberta Bruno • A Punto Centro Cultural del Gusto

Who are you and what is your professional passion? My name is Roberta, I'm Italian and the world of cooking is my passion, above all the world of wines. One of my other passions is marketing and I'm lucky that I work in the marketing department of A Punto, a Cultural Center of Taste, where we can recommend you the best cooking and gastronomy books to prepare your favourite dishes at home.


What will you and MadWay offer the traveller? We offer Spanish and International cooking workshops as well as gastronomic tours to the best spots in Madrid. In our workshops we show you - for example - step by step how to prepare the best paella so that you could repeat it at home!

Joy of Living!

After a visit to San Isidro Cemetery "you'll feel more alive than when you got in". We wander through cypress-lined paths, we admire the monumental pantheons from the inside and we'll be surprised by the profound silence in this oasis in the city. Would you like to get to know the people that rest in peace - who were they, how did they live, who did they love, by whom are they remembered - come with us on this unique experience that apart from the Cemetry takes you on a Grand Tour through the Madrid Rio-project...

The details:

• Day & Time: Monday-Sunday at 10.30 am
• Duration: 3 hours
• Minimum/Maximum: minimum 5 people / maximum 15 people
• Price indication: from 37,50 € per person (by normal bike) / 44 € per person (by electric bike), including a rental bike, a bottle of water, a one-hour guided visit of the Cemetry (with a hot soup in winter & and a refreshing drink in summer)
• Meeting Point: Plaza de la Villa (by normal bike) / Plaza de Santiago (by electric bike)
• Information, reservation or a tailor-made proposal: Through info@madwaytomadrid.com or the following link

The Week of Science... or two?!

Science = Boring? You could be mistaken! A week? Yep, you caught us… These scientists could be failing their calculations, because we counted exactly 14 days. That is TWO weeks. Anyway… we have read all of hundreds of pages of the program, until we were almost lost. To start with we recommend you the Open Door-activities, among which are the Coca-Cola Factory, the Barajas Airport-from-the-inside, the control room of Metro Madrid or the nerve centre of El País newspaper. To continue, participate in one of the itineraries and excursions through - for example - Madrid Illustrated & Romantic or Madrid’s Civil War. If you have some time left over, you can always participate in a roundtable, a conference, a course, a workshop, an exhibition or a movie…

• From 7 until 20 November 2011
• Website XI Week of Science (Spanish)

BCN down & MAD up...

Madrid is coming closer to its old-time rival Barcelona, bit by bit but steady:

According to El Pais "Barcelona and Madrid get closer in the ranking of the best European cities to do business, says consulting company Cushman & Wakefield in their yearly analysis. Barcelona goes one position down, from five to six, that is taken by Berlin. Madrid goes up, form eight to seven, passing Brussels. Going strong, the first three cities are still London, Paris and Frankfurt, while Amsterdam and Berlin occupy the fourth and fifth place." 

Article in El Pais (in Spanish)

Sit back and relax on Matadero's outdoor terrace

Now that we are sliding towards Autumn and temperatures start to soften down to more comfortable levels, it's time to check out Matadero's outdoor terrace right on Plaza Matadero, the cultural complex' "courtyard". In our humble opinion, it was about time that a bit of liveliness was added to this diamant in Madrid's Industrial Architecture collection. Chapeau! Take it as a starting or ending point before/after a relaxing stroll along Madrid Rió's banks...

Architecture Week and beyond...

Although you'd tend to link architecture to a city like Barcelona, Madrid surprises us every year with its fair share of guided visits and exhibitions related to urban developement and buildings, concentrated in the Architecture Week (3-10 October).

You still have three days to enjoy - for example - one of the interesting exhibitions about past and present of the Madrid Río-project (link to Madrid Río: Ideas and Reality).

Don't worry if you missed out on all of this... There are some worthwhile exhibitions that continue until well into November. We recommend the following:

• the 11^th Spanish Architecture and Town Planning Biennale at the Arquería de Nuevos Ministerios exhibition space, showing all eleven projects submitted for the event (link to BEAU XI)
• the "Teotihuacan: City of the Gods"-exhibition in Caixa Forum (link to Caixa Forum and Exhibition-info)