Best procession position: Calle Mayor or Plaza de la Villa, Viernes Santo evening - arrive by 18:00 h before Medinaceli departs at 19:00 h

Best new opening: Dalí Infinito at the Palacio de Gaviria - 14 large-format sculptures in a restored 19th-century palace, Calle Arenal 9, steps from Sol

Best value: Hammershøi at the Thyssen, free entry Saturday 5 April from 21:00 h

Best Tuesday evening: Divas: tres leyendas de la Edad de Plata - sopranos Lojendio and Vázquez, mezzosoprano Coma-Alabert, Teatro de la Zarzuela, 7 April, 19:30 h

One thing to skip: Driving anywhere near Centro from Thursday through Sunday. The procession routes close progressively from mid-afternoon. Take the metro, or walk.

The processions this week are different from the ones last weekend. Domingo de Ramos is festive - palms, children, a city in a good mood about itself. What comes from Jueves Santo onwards is something else entirely: slower, quieter, and without any sense of performance. The pasos on Thursday and Friday evenings move through streets that have been doing this for five hundred years, and you can feel it.

The city will be half-empty in some respects and impassable in others. The galleries are quiet. The terraces have space. The restaurants that stay open run at a different pace. Use the week correctly and it is one of the better times to be in Madrid.

Two exhibitions worth your time this week, one of them brand new. The Palacio de Gaviria on Calle Arenal reopened last week after a long restoration, and the Dalí sculptures now inside it are not what most people expect when they hear that name. Go before the queues form.

Semana Santa opened last Friday. What remains is its core: Miércoles, Jueves, and Viernes Santo, then the sober Saturday and the return of noise on Sunday. The Ayuntamiento has closed the historic centre progressively from mid-afternoon each day, with 75 streets restricted and 230 traffic agents deployed. The official viewing point at Puerta del Sol has 500 seated places, free entry from Calle Carretas.

Each day has its own register. Wednesday is still building. Thursday becomes serious. Friday is the axis of the entire week - the Jesús de Medinaceli procession is the largest in the Madrid calendar. Saturday carries a silence that tends to catch people off guard. Sunday closes it with drums.

THE EVENT: Semana Santa Madrid 2026 - Miércoles to Domingo de Resurrección

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Centro, La Latina, Lavapiés - historic centre

WHEN: 1 to 5 April 2026. Processions begin from approximately 19:00 h each evening

PRICE / BOOKING: Free - all processions open to the public

OFFICIAL: diario.madrid.es (full programme with routes and times)

For Miércoles Santo (1 April): the Cristo de los Gitanos paso departs from Lavapiés. Position yourself on the descent towards Tirso de Molina rather than on the main route through Sol - quieter, and a better view.

For Jueves Santo (2 April): four processions converge on the casco histórico, including El Divino Cautivo and Jesús del Gran Poder. The atmosphere after 21:00 h on Thursday is the one most Madrileños cite when asked what Semana Santa means in this city.

For Viernes Santo (3 April): Jesús de Medinaceli departs from the basilica at 19:00 h and moves through Alcalá, Sol, Mayor, and Plaza de la Villa. This is the procession that requires planning. Arrive an hour early and stay on Calle Mayor, which gives you the passage in both directions and the architecture of old Madrid behind it. The Cristo de los Alabarderos processes near the Palacio Real; the Santo Entierro leaves Santa Cruz at 20:30 h in a noticeably sparser atmosphere.

For Sábado Santo (4 April): the Soledad y Desamparo and Cristo Yacente depart from the Concepción Real de Calatrava at 16:00 h. Of everything this week, this tends to move people who were not expecting to be moved.

For Domingo de Resurrección (5 April): solemn Mass at the Almudena at 12:00 h, followed by the tamborrada in Plaza Mayor at 13:00 h.

For anyone who lives in Madrid and has not yet stood in Calle Mayor on a Holy Week evening when the drums are close and the incense comes through the cold air. This is not a religious experience unless you want it to be. It is a Madrid experience, which is a different thing entirely. Not for those who treat the processions as a backdrop for photographs and leave before they have started.

The Palacio de Gaviria on Calle Arenal has spent years under restoration. It reopened last week, and the Dalí sculptures now permanent inside it are not the paintings most people carry in their heads when they think of the artist.

These are fourteen large-format sculptures made between 1973 and 1983 using the lost-wax process, from the Clot-Quirós collection, alongside nearly a hundred drawings and engravings from private collections. Pieces like Elefante cósmico, Mujer desnuda subiendo escalera, and Alma del Quijote at monumental scale in the restored rooms of a 19th-century private palace, steps from Puerta del Sol. The Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí formally authorised the collection earlier this year. The building itself - aristocratic, slightly worn at the edges, full of painted ceilings - does something to the work that a white cube would not.

THE EXHIBITION: Dalí Infinito

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Centro, Calle Arenal 9

WHEN: Open daily 10:00 to 20:00 h (last entry 19:00 h). Permanent exhibition

PRICE / BOOKING: General 15 euros / Reduced 11 euros

OFFICIAL: palaciogaviria.com

Go on a weekday morning while the rest of the city is either watching processions or recovering from them. The building opens at 10:00 h and the first hour is quiet. Start with the ground floor rooms - the scale of the sculptures reads differently in the low-ceilinged painted rooms of the palace than it would in a purpose-built gallery space - and take the upper rooms in the sequence the exhibition proposes. The drawings and engravings alongside the sculptures give the whole thing a different weight than a standalone sculpture show.

For the person who is interested in Dalí beyond the melting watches and the museums in Catalunya, and who wants to see what he was doing in the final decade of his serious work. Also for anyone who wants to see the Palacio de Gaviria, which is worth seeing for its own sake. Not for those who need context provided at every step, or who prefer their surrealism well catalogued in advance.

The first full retrospective of Vilhelm Hammershøi in Spain continues at the Thyssen-Bornemisza until 31 May. Ninety oils and drawings, organised in six sections, with connecting rooms that draw lines between Hammershøi and the seventeenth-century Dutch painters he studied, and the twentieth-century painters - Edward Hopper is the clearest case - who studied him in turn.

The work is mainly rooms with no one in them, or figures with their backs turned, or light arriving from sources the painting declines to identify. The subtitle, El ojo que escucha, refers to his relationship with music and with silence - he attended concerts compulsively throughout his life and described painting and listening as variations of the same act.

THE EXHIBITION: Hammershøi: El ojo que escucha

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Paseo del Arte, Paseo del Prado 8

WHEN: Tues to Fri and Sunday 10:00 to 19:00 h. Saturday 10:00 to 23:00 h. Until 31 May 2026

PRICE / BOOKING: General 14 euros / Reduced 10 euros. Free Saturday 21:00 to 23:00 h

OFFICIAL: museothyssen.org

This Saturday (5 April) the Thyssen is free from 21:00 h. The museum empties substantially by 21:30 h, the rooms are quieter than at any point during a paid visit, and Hammershøi specifically benefits from being seen without other people's voices in the space. If you have already been in the daytime, go again on Saturday evening for the last rooms. If you have not yet been, go now rather than waiting for May - the weeks after Easter fill quickly.

For the person who has been meaning to go since the exhibition opened and has run out of reasonable excuses to delay. The Saturday-night free-entry window is an argument for going this specific weekend. Not for those who need movement, colour, and narrative from their painting. These rooms ask you to stand still for longer than most exhibitions require.

The Ruta Dulces Pasiones - Madrid's annual torrija circuit, with over fifty participating pastelerías, panaderías, and restaurants - runs until 5 April. After that, the season closes. Most places that make them well only make them for this week.

The 2026 winners: La Raspa VK at the Mercado de Numancia in Vallecas (best traditional torrija in the region), and Plademunt in Alcalá de Henares for innovation. La Raspa VK uses homemade brioche, milk infused with cinnamon, lemon, and orange, and caramelises with butter rather than deep-frying.

THE ROUTE: Ruta Dulces Pasiones 2026 - over 50 participating establishments

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Citywide

WHEN: Until 5 April 2026

PRICE: From 2.50 euros per unit

OFFICIAL: madrid.es/semanasanta (full map of participating establishments)

Three addresses worth the journey. La Raspa VK at the Mercado de Numancia in Puente de Vallecas (Calle Josefa Díaz 4) is this year's contest winner - worth the metro ride south. El Riojano on Calle Mayor has made its traditional milk and wine version without modification since 1855. La Duquesita on Fernando VI does a brioche-based version with a long fermentation that justifies the queue. Eat them standing. This is not a table situation.

For the person who wants to eat something specific to this city at the specific week of the year when it means something. The route closes Sunday. Not for those who will read this on Monday and wish they had gone.

On Tuesday 7 April, the Teatro de la Zarzuela closes the week with a concert dedicated to three figures from the city's own lyric history: Conchita Supervía, Conchita Badía, and María Barrientos, sopranos and mezzosoprano from the Edad de Plata of Spanish music whose recordings are still listened to and whose careers crossed Madrid's stages in the first decades of the twentieth century.

The performers are sopranos Raquel Lojendio and Silvia Vázquez, mezzosoprano Gemma Coma-Alabert, and pianist Irene Alfageme. The programme is built around the repertoire those three singers made - Spanish lied, operatic fragments, and the crossover between the lyric stage and the salon that defined that particular moment in Madrid's musical life.

THE EVENT: Divas: tres leyendas de la Edad de Plata

NEIGHBOURHOOD: Centro, Jovellanos 4

WHEN: 7 April 2026, 19:30 h

PRICE / BOOKING: entradasinaem.es

OFFICIAL: teatrodelazarzuela.inaem.gob.es

The Zarzuela is the right size for a programme like this - small enough that there is no bad seat, large enough that the voices have room to land. Book in advance: the Zarzuela's Tuesday concert series fills faster than its main lyric productions. Have dinner afterwards in Huertas, which is a ten-minute walk and is one of the few parts of the city that returns to something like normal pace by Monday of Easter week.

For the person who wants to end the week with something specific and unhurried, in a room that was built for exactly this. The programme rewards anyone with some familiarity with the Spanish lyric repertoire, but it does not require it. Not for those who need a large orchestra or a production. This is voices, piano, and a theatre that knows how to listen.

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The Edit Madrid is a weekly cultural briefing for the observer, not the tourist. We cut through the noise and publish what genuinely earns your time: independent places, deep culture, and lived-in Madrid knowledge. Written by four people who live here properly.

The EDIT Madrid is a weekly cultural briefing for the observer, not the tourist. We cut through the noise and publish what genuinely earns your time: independent places, deep culture, and lived-in Madrid knowledge.

Written by four people who live here properly.