Emanuele Cantoni's top 5

1. The place: The San Miguel market
Reestablished at the end of 2009 in the centre of the city, beside the Plaza Mayor, this old market is based on a new concept: as well as just shopping there, you can now eat very luxuriously: ostrich, sushi, cheeses, meats, chocolate... The market is always full of both Madrileños and tourists.

2. Art: "Monet and abstraction"
Near the most famous permanent exhibitions of the Prado and the Reina Sofia, new exhibitions housed in foundations patronized by banking institutions and sometimes exhibited inside the very headquarters of those institutions have a particular resonance. For example, the exhibition "Monet and abstraction" is being partly presented in the Thyssen Museum and partly in the head offices of Caja Madrid. It is the biggest exhibition site in the world, featuring hundreds of works by impressionist artists and some of their modern disciples, such as Pollock, Rothko and De Kooning, who took inspiration from Monet during the second half of the twentieth century.
www.museothyssen.org

3. Food and drink: Whisky Live Madrid
The second edition of Whisky Live Madrid will be taking place close to the Hotel Villa Magna and will be a classy appointment for connoisseurs of special whiskies. The Hotel Villa Magna will welcome all the main distilleries in the world who will demonstrate their work, their secrets and the results of their work on that one product, whisky, which is increasingly appreciated throughout the world. In parallel, some Madrid restaurants, such as La Broche, Lágrimas Negras, Dassa Bassa, El Chaflán and Pedro La Rumbe will present original menus accompanied by very singular price tags, creating an unusual and attractive tandem between high gastronomy and whisky.
www.guiamaximin.com

4. Liberty: The gay quarter
In 2005, the Spanish Socialist Government extended the right to be legally married to homosexual couples and became the third country in the world, after Holland and Belgium, to legalize homosexual marriages (now there are five of them, as well as two US states), and the first and only Catholic country to do so. Annually, Madrid celebrates Gay Pride Day, which this year has been organized for the 3 July. The Spanish capital is a very cosmopolitan city where all races, cultures and sexual orientations live together in extreme tolerance, respect and integration, as can be seen in the Chueca quarter. This is a central area and is also the gay quarter, a neighbourhood full of interesting venues by day and by night. This very quarter will be the principal scene for the festivities programmed between 25 June and 4 July, which, like every year, will host cultural performances and events of various types

5. Events: The festival of Saint Isidro, patron saint of Madrid
The legend goes that in the 11th century, Saint Isidro saved King Phillip III from a serious illness thanks to miraculous water from a source he had blessed; from that moment, he became the symbol of the city and is remembered every 15 May. It is the most important event for all Madrid because it is a festival that, every year, for an entire month, revitalizes spring in the Spanish capital with a programme of concerts, exhibitions and shows. During that period, you celebrate by drinking water from the holy source and attending the Taurino Festival, which fills the "plaza de toros de Las Ventas" with daily bullfights.

Video: At one bullfight at Las Ventas in 2009 during the Festival of Saint Isidro, the bull wins.