Historic Centre Segway Tours

Six Segway tours ride the historic centre of Madrid, and almost every difference between them comes down to one thing: how far west they get. The Habsburg core — Plaza Mayor, Plaza de la Villa, the Almudena, the Royal Palace — is on all of them. The Templo de Debod and the Sabatini Gardens are only on the longer ones. Choose on that, not on price.

Riding the centre is not riding the park

Madrid’s Sustainable Mobility By-Law treats a Segway as a personal mobility vehicle. It cannot use pavements at all. It is confined to bike lanes and streets with a 30 km/h limit, capped at 25 km/h, and riders may not use a phone or headphones while moving. Two people on one machine is prohibited outright.

In practice a centre tour spends a real share of its time in traffic, on cobbles, stopping at junctions. That is not a reason to avoid it — it is a reason not to make it your first ever Segway ride. If you have never used one, book a Retiro Park route first and come back here on the second day.

The compensation is the architecture. The Royal Palace has more than 135,000 square metres of floor space and 3,418 rooms, which makes it the largest royal palace in Western Europe, and the centre routes ride its full frontage rather than glimpsing it from one corner.

The six routes

City Center Guided Segway Tour — $33, 1 to 1.5 hours. The lowest-priced guided centre tour in Madrid and one of the highest rated, at 4.8/5. Ópera to Plaza Mayor, the Almudena and the Royal Palace, with the Templo de Debod on the longer option. Includes water and free luggage storage while you ride, which is genuinely useful on a checkout day.

Madrid Downtown Segway Tour — $45, 1.5 hours. Starts a minute from Ópera metro and concentrates on the narrow Habsburg streets rather than the squares. Photos taken by the guide are included.

2-Hour Sightseeing Segway Tour — $54, 2 hours. The full survey: Almudena, Royal Palace, Plaza de la Villa, the 15th-century Casa y Torre de los Lujanes, the Mercado de San Miguel, Plaza Mayor and the Templo de Debod. Note the minimum of two participants.

1-Hour Segway Tour with Chocolate and Churros — $50, 1 hour. Same medieval route as the short city tours, with chocolate con churros included near the Mercado de San Miguel. In Madrid the chocolate is a drink rather than a sauce — thick enough to stand a churro in.

Madrid by Night — $32, 1 hour. The cheapest Segway tour in the city and the only one after dark. The monuments are floodlit and the streets carry far less traffic, which on a vehicle barred from pavements is worth more than the atmosphere.

All Madrid Guided Segway Tour — $52, 3 hours. The longest route in the city. It is really a combined tour — it takes in Retiro and the Paseo del Prado as well as the whole centre — and it is covered properly on the combined routes page.

The Templo de Debod is the real dividing line

It is a genuine Egyptian temple of the 2nd century BC. Egypt gave it to Spain after the Aswan High Dam threatened the site it stood on, and it was rebuilt stone by stone on a hill west of the Royal Palace in 1972.

It sits far enough from Plaza Mayor that walking tours rarely include it and Segway tours regularly do. If you want one illustration of what the extra speed buys you in Madrid, that is it — and it is why a 1.5-hour route is worth the difference over an hour.

What the centre routes cannot do

A Segway does not go inside the Royal Palace, the Almudena or the market. It cannot legally use the pedestrianised lanes that make old Madrid worth walking. If what you want is interiors, tapas or the inside of Mercado de San Miguel, a walking tour serves you better, and the format comparison sets out when that is the right call.

Every centre operator sets a minimum age of ten except Madrid Segway, which allows nine on its downtown route. Riders under 18 need an adult with them. See the family page for the full limits, or check availability for any date.