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Spain Travel Guide - Tours and
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Nonetheless,
it was a success, and today Madrid is a vast, predominantly modern city,
with a population of some three million and growing. The journey in -
through a stream of concrete-block suburbs - isn't pretty, but the
streets at the heart of the city are a pleasant surprise, with pockets
of medieval buildings and narrow, atmospheric alleys, dotted with the
oddest of shops and bars, and interspersed with eighteenth-century
Bourbon squares. By comparison with the historic cities of Spain -
Toledo, Salamanca, Sevilla, Granada - there may be few sights of great
architectural interest, but the monarchs did acquire outstanding picture
collections, which formed the basis of the Prado museum. This has long
ensured Madrid a place on the European art tour, and the more so since
the 1990s arrival - literally down the street - of the Reina Sofía and
Thyssen-Bornemisza galleries, state-of-the-art homes to fabulous arrays
of modern Spanish painting (including Picasso's Guernica ) and European
and American masters.