Madrid City Sightseeing and Royal Palace Tour

Madrid, Spain

Discover Madrid's multi-faceted history, from its Arab origins to the reigns of Phillip II and Charles III, and finally to present day Madrid. It was during the reign of Charles III in the 18th century that artistic and cultural ideas were introduced, enabling Madrid to become an important cultural and scientific center.

Walk past such well known sights and squares as Monumento de la Encarnacion, Plaza de Oriente, Mayor, Puerta de la Operal, Ramales, de la Villa, Sacramento, Puerta del Sol and Colón square, where you can stop, relax and enjoy a complimentary soft drink.

Continue to Madrid's Royal Palace. Built in the 18th century on the site of an ancient alcassar (Arab-fortress) in the classical Italian baroque style, it is one of the most beautiful and best preserved palaces in Europe. Your tour of the palace reveals rich tapestries, exquisite china pieces, clocks in every room

USD $45.97

Review by: Mindy O	April 2012
Madrid City Sightseeing tour was a good way to see the major sights of Madrid. The tour guide was very knowledgeable. The tour was very enjoyable.

Review by: Geraldine K	February 2012
Very Good, great overview of the city on the bus and then a very informative tour of the Royal Palace. Guide was very good, good value overall.

Review by: DAN P	December 2011
good+_br/_ We would like to emphasize the guide SILVIA _br/_ for a job well done

Review by: Ka C	November 2011
Wouldn't recommend this tour... the bus goes pretty fast, the tour guide rolled together both Spanish and English so it was very hard to understand. Plus, the bus's speakers were also not that great ... we pretty much had to escape during the Royal Palace tour so we could just go about it on our own. Better off taking a different tour..

Review by: Stefan H	November 2011
First time in Madrid for my wife and I. 3 hour tour really enjoyable. Our coach was very comfortable. The bilingual guide was excellent. The tour around the Royal Palace was very good. Would recommend Viator as a very professional tour company.

Review by: Traveller89	November 2011
It was enjoyable.

Review by: Elizabeth M	October 2011
This sightseeing tour is very interesting and efficient! My parents were visiting for only 4 days while I study abroad, so they didn't have a lot of time to see everything in Madrid. This tour allowed them to see basically every landmark around the city! The tour guide was also very helpful and funny. It was nice to get off the bus and see the Royal Palace too. I'd definitely recommend it.

Review by: David M	October 2011
The royal palace was amazing, but you only stop there and at the hard rock cafe, so I had to work back from the Palace in order to actually see the other sights we passed by. I think just go see these places yourself.

Review by: LAUREN K	September 2011
The tour was good... A good introduction to the city, but unfortunately, the Palace was closed so we did not get to see it and we need to get a refund for the difference.

Review by: LAUREN K	September 2011
The tour was good... A good introduction to the city, but unfortunately, the Palace was closed so we did not get to see it and we need to get a refund for the difference.

Review by: NICOLE H	September 2011
This tour was a valuable experience as the motor coach takes you past the local bull ring, to Spanish Village and other historical sites including walking inside the Royal Palace.

Review by: HARRIET C	September 2011
Excellent, good overview and excellent palace tour; recommend this one highly.

Review by: Kaushik P	September 2011
Unfortunately I could not take that trip. Hence, no comments.

Review by: Virginia T	September 2011
We particularly enjoyed the Royal Palace Tour. Our guide was very good and had an excellent knowledge of the Palace and its history.

Review by: dnabarlow	September 2011
the madrid city tour was pathetic....a bus ride with someone saying 'to your right is a building, and on your left is a building....' very uninformative with no history or interesting aspect to it. One stop...20 minutes at an area with nothing other than the Hard Rock Cafe that wants your business and is in cahoots with the tour company! There are better places to stop...like the gardens next to the Prado!

Review by: Alex V	August 2011
If it wasn't for the Royal Palace Tour part (very well and knowledgeably conducted, plus the beauty of the place), I would have asked for my money back._br/_ Furthermore, the organizers almost started the tour before the scheduled time.

Review by: BG	August 2011
Very good guide. Very good tour

Review by: Michelle V	August 2011
This tour is very informative and the tour guide is really good and very pleasant.

Review by: Robert S	August 2011
This tour was very interesting and the Tour Guide was excellent. The pace was a good pace to allow taking in the beauty of the Palace and look at all it had to offer.

Review by: Nancy G	August 2011
The best part of the tour was the guide, She was very knowledgeable and her English was very good.

Review by: Alexandra M	July 2011
This tour was not informative, fun, nor would I recommend it. They took us to the Hard Rock cafe (which I can go to in the US) and you couldnt see much out of the bus windows. That being said the tour guide was nice and the Royal Palace was AMAZING. Look into just getting a royal palace tour, would be my recommendation.

Review by: CHARLENE C	July 2011
worth it for the Royal Palace Tour alone! but hard to locate where the tour agency was and was unorganized at the meeting place.

Review by: Virginia K	July 2011
The sightseeing half of this tour was not worth the time or money spent. We drove past the beautiful and important Madrid monuments and got out at unimportant and uninteresting locations. The only reason i did not demand my money back was our fantastic tour of the Royal Palace. Our guide was intelligent and engaging and made up for the horrible first half of the tour.

Review by: gango	July 2011
Tour took off slightly delayed.Sightseeing tour was so-so, the Royal Palace tour was much better--overall an excellent experience.

Review by: Kevin M	July 2011
Interesting introduction to Madrid seeing most of the sites on the bus tour. Guide did very well with English, Spanish and French commentary. The Royal Palace at the end was stunning and again the guide did really well with her commentary. Only let down was some of the other torists in the group keeping us waiting at every stop!

Review by: Amy Caroline	July 2011
The bus tour around the city got repetitive after a while but the royal palace tour was def a HIGHLIGHT. Our guide led us on an intimate tour and was very knowledgable about everything inside and regarding the palace and the royals. A must do stop when in Madrid!

Review by: VESNA K	July 2011
Apart from the very informative tour of the Royal Palace, the rest of the city sightseeing was done in a hurry and didn't encourage interest. Viator should consider the change of the itinerary making it more relaxed and with a nice pace allowing visitors to soak up the amtmospere of this lovely city. 3 hours is not enough for that.

Review by: sinha.sangita	June 2011
I have been to many viator tours but this was the worst I did. Tour was divided into two parts. City Sightseeing and later on Royal Palace. _br/_ Regarding the sightseeing part,by the description in activity info I assumed we would "walk past" some of the sites as mentioned on the site however its not walking past its driving past. Again if you are driving past any city its as good as a guide telling you the history and story of the city and bringing it alive for you. We had a guide Antonio and all he did was let the bus stop in front of the building and tell us few lines about who and when they were made. I want more than statistics, how an important attraction goes with city culture or what role it played. I could have done this better myself. Highly disappointing, Guide did speak in multiple languages but as I have seen if a guide is good(Sofia and Carmen from Julia our other tour guides were really competent) number of languages can be excused.Itinerary was perfect but the presentation ruined it for us._br/_ Next part of the tour was Royal palace. This part included bus taking us to the palace and then walking past various rooms. We had the same guide and whatever he told us was anyway written in English explanation in all the rooms. Nothing new and interesting. _br/_ So I would recommend doing away with this one and doing it all on your own.

Review by: Ellen M	June 2011
This is a good panoramic tour of Madrid. Everything was covered and the Royal Palace Tour was good. This is good for first time visitors.

Review by: Allen M	June 2011
The tour at the beginning was very confusing as we had to change buses 3 times, tour was very good and guide was very knowledgeable. Excellent tour of the Royal Palace, just wished they allowed us to take pcs inside.

Review by: Todd F	May 2011
Excellent tour; worth skipping the long lines into the palace.

Review by: nikkygemini	May 2011
it was ok

Review by: pwrbecks	May 2011
This was a waste of $$, the local company is very disorganized, and the guides and office staff are not friendly at all. When you get to the meeting point you are mixed with other local tour providers. The bus ride takes you around the city and you really have no time or advantage point of see any of the sights, there's a 15 min stop in Plaza Colon were there's really nothing to see or do. Is like taking a cab ride around the city. The Palace was nice but you are better of doing that on your own, with the audio guide. I did, I eventually ditched the grumpy guide and did the Palace on my own once we got there. Do the hop on hop off bus instead, do the Palace on your own

Review by: AmyB	April 2011
this is probably the worst tour we've ever been in Viator tour. Our guide don't speak english so much. she has to do the tour in 3 languages. She will only say the name of the building and won't say anything much about it._br/_ This tour is very boring we were seating in the bus for like 2hrs and not learn anything. We thought we would not stop to any interesting place at all good thing our one and only stop which is the Royal palace is good. I think this tour would be better if we had a few stops to this very cool places and not only one. this would have been a better tour if our guide speaks english good..we were disappointed and not recommend this tour.

Review by: John M	March 2011
Overall excellent tour. First part, the sightseeing was mostly windshield touring but the Royal Palace Tour was an excellent walk about; well managed and well narrated.

Review by: Richard K	March 2011
Fast overview of the city + tour inside the palace

Review by: Judy	February 2011
That was an excellent tour and we had a great guide.

Review by: Selina C	December 2010
Tour bus didn't stop at all for photo.

Review by: Ann Z	November 2010
Excellent, guide was extremely knowlegeable

Review by: Scuderia	November 2010
Nice tour.

Review by: Richard Lasar	October 2010
guide in the palace was not good. she was in too much of a hurry. didn't want to bother with the English part. told us much less than she shared with the Spanish part. rushed us through to get to her next job. seemed annoyed with our questions.

Review by: John W, United States of America	July 2010
The palace was great! The bus trip was a little hard to understand because the guide had to keep going from Spanish to English and it was hard to keep up, but did enjoy bus tour of the ciyt.

Review by: Anonymous, Philippines	May 2010
it was a good overview of the city. however, it would be nice if they could seperate tours per language so that there would be continuos flow of information.

Review by: Patrick K, Ireland	February 2010
We have always found that the best introduction to a city visit is th do a sightseeing tour where you learn somthing about the city and also see some of the sights. In this case, we saw the Royal Palace which was very good and we found out the locations of the three big museums and saw the main sights. So over the rest of that day and the two next days of our visit we managed to see all of the three museums and saw many of the sights. We did something similar with Viator when we visited Milan in March 2009 and feel it is a must to get the best out of a short city visit.

Review by: Ellen S, United States of America	February 2010
The tour of the Royal Palace was beautiful and our guide was very knowledgeable and interesting. The bus tour guide was a little difficult to understand and didn't go into as much detail as we'd have liked about the history of the buildings she was showing us, but it was extremely helpful to have taken the tour when we went exploring on our own the next day.

Review by: Maria Ines G, United States of America	December 2009
Great tour.

Review by: Christopher W, United States of America	December 2009
Very good tour and wonderful palace.

Review by: Max G, United States of America	October 2009
The tour of the palace was nice but its nothing that we couldn't have done ourselves especially with the listening devices that are provided in almost any language. As for the tour of the city, very informative but a bit long. Good to see where things are and then go out exploring on your own.

Review by: Anonymous, Australia	October 2009
This tour was very interesting, particularly the Royal Palace. I would have preferred a smaller group, however the guide did an excellent job.

Review by: Frances R, United States of America	September 2009
Great tour. Our tour guide was awesome. We had her on another tour earlier in the week and it was nice to see her again. Even went back later in the day to check out the gift shop.