The city council has launched a new resource that will help visitors to discover and make the most of their trip to the capital: the Madrid City Card. The Councillor for Tourism, Almudena Maíllo, has today presented this official City of Madrid tourist card, which combines a transport pass for visitors with easy access to as many as thirty of Madrid’s tourist, cultural and leisure attractions, including lots of benefits and special discounts.

This project is designed to improve the quality of the service the capital provides to visitors, to raise the profile of its tourist attractions, and to promote a more sustainable form of tourism by including access to the city’s underground, suburban rail network and urban buses (zone A). As Maíllo explained, not only is the initiative consistent with one of the main objectives of the Strategic Tourism Plan 2020-2023, which aims to make Madrid a leading destination in terms of visitor experience, but it also allows the City Hall to take further steps towards achieving several of its other objectives such as improving sustainability and digitisation. Thanks to this product, she continued, it will be possible to gain a better understanding of which markets are generating tourists to the capital, and to analyse both their consumption habits in the city and their preferences.

Benefits and discounts

The Madrid City Card offers preferential access to certain establishments and special benefits and reduced prices at some of the capital’s most outstanding attractions. These include: the art galleries that grace Paseo del Arte (Art Walk), namely the Prado, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Reina Sofía; the Royal Palace; Liria Palace; the Wax Museum; the Lázaro Galdiano Museum; La Almudena Cathedral Museum; the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts; the Faro de Moncloa observation deck; Galería Canalejas; the tour of Las Ventas Bullring; the Santiago Bernabéu and Cívitas Metropolitano stadiums; Círculo de Bellas Artes; CentroCentro; and the Church of San Antonio de los Alemanes. Other services include the Madrid City Tour sightseeing bus, the Tienda Casa de la Panadería gift shop—where you can buy official Madrid products—, the Teleférico cable car and the Bicimad bike sharing scheme.

Another important feature of this new card is the fact that it both includes and raises awareness of other attractive places of interest for visitors, such as the municipal museums, which are free of charge and promote the city’s extensive cultural heritage. The card actually recommends visits to no less than 10 such attractions: the Temple of Debod, the Museum of San Isidro, San Antonio de la Florida Chapel, the History Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, La Imprenta Municipal - Artes del Libro (the Municipal Press - Book Arts), Alameda Castle, the Conde Duque Exhibition Hall, the Open-Air Sculpture Museum on Paseo de la Castellana, and the Planetarium. What’s more, the city council has plans to gradually add other resources and functionalities to this product.

Types, price and marketing

The tourist card is available for adults and children and can be purchased for between one and five consecutive days as follows: one day (€8.40), two days (€14.20), three days (€18.40), four days (€22.60) and five days (€26.80). Children under the age of 11 are entitled to a 50% discount on these prices, while those under the age of 4 do not need a card to access its benefits or public transport.

The Madrid City Card will be available as of Monday the 3rd of April at the Plaza Mayor Tourist Information Centre and the tourist information booths in Plaza del Callao, the Royal Palace, Paseo del Prado, CentroCentro and the Reina Sofía Museum. Visitors can also pre-book their card no matter where they are in the world via the card’s website, subsequently picking it up and paying for it at any of the above-mentioned places.

The card’s activities, discounts and benefits are activated at the time of purchase and remain valid for one month. In order to see which of the attractions is the most appealing at any given time, the Madrid City Card website also allows users to filter the attractions by those closest to their location. The transport benefits are automatically activated the first time the card is used on any means of transport and are valid for calendar days during the selected period.

The Tourism Department has set up a specific website, https://citycard.esmadrid.com/en, where visitors can see how much the card costs and where they can buy it, as well as information about the leisure and cultural attractions included in this product. /