This is where the neighbourhood bands came together, and a century later a stretch of the battlefield vanished beneath a new street.
The metro station that became a shelter, and then a home for people who had lost theirs.
Spain's first cocktail bar, which stayed open when the shells came in, and the end of the walk.
The fifth floor where every foreign dispatch had to pass through, in the building that also served as an aiming point.
A city that fought with scissors, stones and flowerpots, while its own army stayed in the barracks.
The square of a neighbourhood that renamed itself after a single day, street by street.
An art nouveau church in a city full of baroque, with a blue starry vault above the altar.
The charity hospital where the wounded were carried, with the little graveyard behind it where Manuela Malasaña lies. Inside, a second story waits for you.
The boulevard that cost fourteen streets their existence, home to Spain's very first skyscraper.
How the news rode out of the city and sparked a war that lasted six years, with the way back to the Puerta del Sol.
The hotel where the foreign press sat out the war, with hot water while the rest of the city queued for everything.
A quarrel over a forest, the stone where every Spanish road begins its count, and the clock that brings the whole country to a standstill on New Year's Eve.
What Goya painted six years later happened right here: the imperial cavalry against an unarmed crowd.
A Goya whose portrait got painted over every time the politics shifted, and the 1830 scale model of Madrid.
A former almshouse with the most exuberant Baroque doorway in Spain, now home to the city museum. Free entry.
A loop through Madrid's most famous spots, from the square where power put itself on display to the boulevard that cost fourteen streets their existence.
The day Madrid rose up against Napoleon's army with knives, stones and flowerpots, followed hour by hour.
The only building on this square that witnessed the second of May, and the decree that was signed that afternoon.
The executions that night on a hill to the west, and the painting that shapes how we picture it.
The painting that passed for a copy for three centuries, until someone found the signature.
The church where Quevedo was baptised and Lope de Vega married, with a chocolate house down the alley beside it.
The people of Madrid called this street Shell Avenue, and life simply carried on.
The one barracks where there actually was fighting that day, and the two officers who set their orders aside.
This is where the national company stages the Golden Age, a hundred metres from the streets where that repertoire was written.
A loop through the streets where Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo and Góngora all lived at the same time, taking every opportunity to thwart one another.
The only theatre in Madrid still standing on its old corral, and the sausage war the audience fought out here.
The society behind this door counted Larra as member number one, and in 1932 it held a vote on whether God exists.
The end of the walk, with the spoils of fame divided and the way back to the metro.
The boulevard where a king aligned science, nature, and art, from the fountain to the observatory.
An opera house built over an old stream, which stayed shut for more than forty years after work on the metro began.