The regions at, and around Madrid now features exotic Continental Mediterranean climatic conditions. You can find chilly winters here. Environmentalists say that its unique altitude has a lot to do with that. The winter in Madrid is however characterized by sporadic snowfalls as well as amazingly low temperatures that often fall beneath the freezing level. At the other end of the weather spectrum, the summer usually is hot with high temperatures, which almost consistently go beyond 30 °C (or 86 °F) during the month of July and August. Though rare, you could actually find the temperatures hiking over 40 °C (or 104 °F) in some cases.

In fact, the altitude of Madrid along with its dry climate can be easily noticed in the summertime. Precipitation is concentrated during the autumn or spring, but you can easily observe this all through the year. Madrid gets around 50% of the essential water supply as it has established dams alongside reservoirs, most of which are on the Lozoya River. One of the prominent dams of Madrid is the El Atazar Dam.

However, the metropolitan area is called Área metropolitana de Madrid in Spanish. It now includes the city of Madrid alongside 40 surrounding municipalities. It’s got a decent size of population which consists of a little higher than 5.8 million. Today, it occupies an area as large as 4.609,7 sq km. It’s now ranked the largest amongst the Spanish metropolitan areas. One measure declared it as the 4^th largest among the ones in EU nations and this metropolitan is the 45^th biggest in the whole world. Madrid also has some sub-metropolitan areas as well.

One of the major attractions of this area is the Egyptian shrine of Debod. True the sites of this place was preoccupied ever since the primitive times, the 1^st historical data concerning this city actually dates at the mid 9^th century, as Mohammad I issued orders for the structure of his small palace. This site is now featuring the Palacio Real. This palace premeditatedly was constructed overlooking the River called Manzanares. The muslims in this era used to call it Mayrit – which means the source of water.

Another place worth watching is Plaza de la Villa. This place has the memories of Philip II. He moved the court enduringly to Madrid. Thus, this city started to beautify itself with different palaces, special convents, Christian churches along with other types of historic buildings. It’s fortunate for history lovers that a large part of these managed to survive till the present day.

This Madrid, which is alternatively called the Madrid de los Austrias, happens to be among the most creative as well as culturally rich. Many people are unaware of the fact that Madrid had dedicated and highly talented architect called Juan Gomez de Mora, who happened to be the stylistic successor of Juan de Herrera. The early twentieth century was marked by the building of the Gran Vía. The big idea here was to free the aged town. So different types of styling were used, which evolved as time passed. Besides this, there are other interesting historic sites like - Plaza de España and Torres

Blancas.

Till today, some places like Palacio de Comunicaciones are full of lush greenery. Within downtown Madrid the hugest park for the public is Parque del Retiro. It spreads out towards the northeastern parts of the Atocha Railway station. This station stays at the core of the hi-speed AVE trains. And the current lines reach till Valladolid (on the Northwestern side), Barcelona (on the northeastern side) and Seville (on the southern side). And no one can deny that Madrid happens to be the home for lush trees (around 500,000), which are found in the parks as well as on the streets.