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Madrid’s “best mayor” spent little of the first part of his reign in the city, but his long-term impact is undeniable.

For hundreds of years Madrid’s town council met in the church of San Salvador (since demolished) but in 1644 it was decided to give them a new, permanent home. The Town Hall was completed 50 years later. Its main features – an austere brick and granite façade, steepled towers and ornamental portals – are typical of the architectural style favoured by the Hapsburgs. Juan de Villanueva added the balcony overlooking Calle Mayor so that Queen María Luisa could watch the annual Corpus Christi procession. Highlights of the tour include the gala staircase, hung with tapestries designed by Rubens; the reception hall with its painted ceiling and chandelier; the 16th-century silver monstrance carried in the Corpus Christi procession; the courtyard with stained-glass ceiling; and the debating chamber with frescoes by Antonio Palomino.

The “house of the seven chimneys” dates from around 1570 and is one of the best-preserved examples of domestic architecture in Madrid. The building is said to be haunted by a former lover of Felipe II – not as far fetched as it sounds, as a female skeleton was uncovered here at the end of the 19th century. The house later belonged to Carlos III’s chief minister, the Marqués de Esquilache, whose attempts to outlaw the traditional gentleman’s cape and broad-brimmed hat, on the grounds that rogues used one to conceal weapons and the other to hide their faces, provoked a riot and his dismissal.

The greatest dramatist of Spain’s Golden Age lived in this roomy, two-storey brick house from 1610 until his death in 1635. Lope de Vega started writing at the age of 12 and his amazing tally of 1,500 plays (not counting poetry, novels and devotional works) has never been beaten. He became a priest after the death of his second wife in 1614, but that didn’t stop his compulsive philandering which led to more than one run-in with the law. To tour the restored house with its heavy wooden shutters, creaking staircases and beamed ceilings, is to step back in time. You get to see the author’s bedroom, and the book-lined study where he wrote many of his plays. The women of the house gathered in the adjoining embroidery room – the heavy wall-hangings were to keep out the cold. Other evocative details include a cloak, sword and belt discarded by one of Lope’s friends in the guest bedroom.

Not a casino but an exclusive gentlemen’s club, founded in 1910. The florid architecture by Luis Esteve and José López Salaberry is typical of the period. No expense was spared on the lavish interior which, unfortunately, is not usually open to the public.

There were plans to build a cathedral on the superb hilltop site as early as the 18th century, but it was not until 1879 that the Marqués de Cubas got the go-ahead for his ambitious design; even then, only the Romanesque-style crypt was actually built. The cathedral was eventually completed in the 1980s by architect Fernando Chueca Goitia and opened by Pope John Paul II in 1993. The Gothic interior comes as a surprise, as the exterior is Neo-Classical to harmonize with the Palacio Real. The magnificent bronze doors were installed in October 2000.

This self-taught artist (real name Carlos Sánchez Pérez) was a leading figure of the movida . He produced posters for several of Almodóvar’s films, as well as book illustrations, cartoons and record covers. His exhibition, the “Last Supper”, in the Moriarty Gallery in 1983, brought him to the attention of a wider public.