I hadn't visited Madrid in over 20 years, and found the burial of the M30 (and, increasingly, the radial highways) extremely impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Río

There's also the subway (impressive sprawl, infrastructure itself not so much), and decent buses.

Plenty of areas have also been closed to car traffic.

I'm all for restricting traffic, but it doesn't need to be completely either-or, even in a larger city.