It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in this part of the city; the 19th-century entrepreneurs built their broad avenues and flashy palaces here, and the 20th-century wheeler-dealers added a string of high-tech skyscrapers along the brutal Paseo de Castellano with its constantly whizzing traffic. Salamanca has been a rich neighbour- hood since the Marqués de Salamanca urged all his aristocratic friends to buy into his new development on the northeastern fringe of the city at the end of the 19th century. They came in droves, happy to escape the insanitary medieval jumble of old Madrid for this elegant grid of broad avenues and well-equipped mansions complete with flush toilets. The neighbourhood is still Madrid’s smartest district, home to los yuppís, and their glossy offspring (pijos or pijas). Salamanca is definitely the place to come if you want to exercise your plastic; the streets (particularly Calles Serrano, Goya and Velázquez) are lined with designer boutiques, swanky bars and chic restaurants. The string of terrazas (bars and clubs with terraces) along the Paseo de Castellano are still a fashionable spot to see and be seen, but if you choose to party here, make sure you can hold your own against the perfectly groomed locals. SightsPalacio de Linares and Casa de América Paseo Recoletos 2, T 91 595 48 00. Times and prices vary according to the exhibitions. Metro Banco de España. A century ago everyone who was anyone wanted a mansion along the aristocratic Paseo de Recoletos. This is one of the few survivors, an elegant palace set in handsome gardens which was built by the Marqués de Linares in the 1890s. According to urban myth, the palace is still haunted by the Marqués and his wife. The Marqués defied his family and married a commoner, only to discover that she was his half-sister. The unhappy couple were forced to divide the palace into two apartments and live separately until their deaths, and they still wail about their miserable fate on stormy nights. The Palace has been sympathetically converted into the Casa de América, a cultural centre which hosts exhibitions, film events, lectures and concerts with a Latin American theme. Palacio Marqués de Salamanca Paseo Recoletos 10. Not open to visitors. The most flamboyant of the surviving palaces on the Paseo Recoletos, this was built for the Marqués de Salamanca, the entrepreneur behind the construction of the entire Salamanca district. An extravagant, larger-than-life character who made and lost three fortunes, he lived here with his remarkable art collection and Spain’s first private bathroom until the loss of his final fortune forced him out to the suburbs where he died suddenly in 1883. Appropriately, it has been the headquarters of a Spanish bank since the early 20th century. Opposite the palace is the legendary Café Gijón one of the most famous literary cafés at the turn of the 20th century. Centro Cultural de la Villa Plaza de Colón s/n. T 91 575 60 80. Times and prices vary according to the exhibitions. Metro Colón. Madrid’s subterranean cultural centre is built beneath the modern Plaza de Colón and hosts an impressive range of theatre, music and dance events (it is one of the main venues for the city’s excellent dance festival, Madrid en Danza). The Plaza de Colón and the adjoining Jardines de Descubrimiento are dedicated to Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón), with a monument to the explorer formed from vast blocks of sandstone surrounded by illuminated sheets of water. Biblioteca Nacional and Museo Interactivo del Libro Paseo Recoletos 20, T 91 580 77 59. Tue-Sat 1000-2100, Sun 1000-1400. Free. Metro Serrano. The largest and grandest building on the Paseo de Recoletos is the florid pompous National Library, built in the 19th century under Isabel II. It contains every book printed in Spain since 1712, plus manuscripts, drawings by Goya and Velázquez and the first book of Castillian (Spanish) grammar. Many of the library’s treasures are too fragile to be handled, but the library has circumvented this problem and offers an engaging history of the library and its valuable collection in the adjoining Interactive Book Museum. Museo Arqueológico Nacional C Serrano 13, T 91 577 79 12, http://www.man.es Tue-Sat 0930-2030, Sun 0930-1430. €3, free on Sat afternoon and Sun. Metro Serrano. Madrid’s enormous, gloomy archaeological museum is the most comprehensive in Spain, with a vast collection spanning several millennia. It shares the same building as the Biblioteca Nacional (see above) but the entrance is around the back on Calle Serrano. Although it’s a tad old-fashioned and the labelling is exclusively in Spanish, there is plenty to keep your attention. Highlights include an excellent reproduction of the Altamira caves in Cantabria, discovered in 1879 but thought to have been painted around 8,5000 BC, in which bison, stags, and boars career across the walls with astonishing realism – one boar even scuttles by on several feet, obviously painted in order to create the illusion of rapid movement. The most important and most famous piece in the whole museum is the Dama de Elche, thought to have been sculpted around 500 BC, a mysterious bust of a woman whose enigmatic expression almost outdoes the Mona Lisa. Museo de Escultura al Aire Libre Paseo de la Castellana (under the Paseo de Eduardo Dato). Always open. Free. Metro Rubén Darío. Paseo de la Castellana is not a thing of beauty; streams of cars roar up it and it’s lined with monstrous, glassy buildings. The Museum of Outdoor Sculpture comes as a particularly welcome oasis in this inhuman landscape, even if it is tucked underneath a flyover. There are about a dozen large works by some of Spain’s best known sculptors, including Eduardo Chillida, Joan Miró and Julio González. Urbanización AZCA and Torre Picasso Paseo de la Castellana. Beyond Museo Lázaro Galdiano Metro Nuevos Ministerios. Just to the north of the grim, grey slabs of the Nuevos Ministerios (which house government buildings) is the Urbanización AZCA, a glittering, glassy complex of skyscrapers including Madrid’s largest, the Torre Picasso which was designed by Minori Yamasaki, architect of New York’s Twin Towers. Besides offices, it houses a huge shopping centre and dozens of bars and cafés. Plaza de Castilla and Las Torres Kio Metro Plaza de Castilla Beyond Museo Lázaro Galdiano Madrid’s most unusual contemporary buildings overlook the modern Plaza de Castilla; the towers are visible on the road between the centre and the airport. The twin towers of the Puerta de Europa (still better known as Las Torres KIO, after the Kuwait Investment Office, even though KIO were unable to raise the finance to complete them) lean in towards each other at an alarming angle, and were completed in 1996. Museo Lázaro Galdiano C Serrano 122, T 91 561 60 84. Closed for a major refurbishment in 2000 – expected to reopen late 2002 or early 2003; check with the tourist office. Metro Rubén Darío. Don José Lázaro Galdiano amassed one of the most extraordinary private art collections in Madrid, which he bequeathed to the state on his death in 1942. It is displayed in the very elegant surroundings of his Italianate home in a quiet leafy corner of Salamanca. The collection is astonishingly eclectic and includes archaeological artefacts, paintings, sculptures, armour, furniture, jewellery and one of the finest collections of enamels and ivories in existence. Among the paintings are works by Bosch, Rembrandt, Zurbarán, Velázquez, El Greco and Goya. Museo Sorolla C General Martínez Camps 37, T 91 310 15 84. €2.40/1.20 concessions. Currently closed for restoration until late 2002; check with tourist office. Metro Rubén Darío. This is one of Madrid’s most delightful small museums, devoted to the Valenciano painter Joaquín Sorolla who lived here until his death in 1923. He enjoyed success both internationally and among Madrid’s new bourgeoisie at the end of the 19th century. His luminous paintings borrowed some of the techniques of French Impressionism, but his figures and landscapes are modelled with a sharp clarity. The upper galleries display his light-filled, happy paintings of children and pretty country scenes. The lower floor has been left intact to give some insight into the artist’s everyday life. Light streams in from the huge skylights in his studio and the living areas display jewellery, religious medals and other bits collected on his travels. The house stands in a tiny Moorish-style garden, deliciously cool in summer, with palms, tiles and fountains. La Residencia de Estudiantes C Pinar 23, T 91 563 64 11. Times and prices vary. Usually closed Sat afternoon and Sun. Metro Gregorio Marañón. Above Museo Soralla The Students’ Residence (usually known simply as el resi) was completed in 1915 and rapidly became one of the most influential and dynamic institutions in Spain. Famously, it was here that Lorca, Dalí and Buñuel met and became friends in the 1920s, developing their ground-breaking theories about art and literature. After the Civil War, el resi stultified under Franco’s repressive regime, but it is now undergoing a dramatic refurbishment and hosts some of the most stimulating temporary exhibitions in Madrid. Fundación Juan March C/Castelló 77, T 91 435 42 40. Mon-Sat 1000-1400, 1730-2100, Sun and hols 1000-1400. Free. This cultural centre was established by the Catalan tycoon Juan March in the 1950s (before he got banged up for cooking the books in the 1970s). It hosts excellent temporary exhibitions and major retrospectives and offers a regular programme of music concerts. Plaza de Toros Monumental de las Ventas C Alcalá 237, Plaza de las Ventas, T 91 725 18 57. Tue-Fri 0930-1430. Sun 1000-1300. Free. Metro Ventas. There’s nothing to see in the mainly residential neighbourhood of Ventas except Madrid’s bullring. The ‘Cathedral of Bullfighting’ as it is often called is the largest bullring in Spain, built in the 1930s, with capacity for 22,300 spectators. The bullfighting museum is at the back, near the horses’ stables, with portraits of famous bullfighters, costumes, banderillas (the plumed daggers used to slow down the bull) and the stuffed heads of famous bulls. Most gruesome of all are the bloodstained clothes which belonged to some of the toreros who met their deaths in the bullring; one of the most recent was Yiyo, who died here in 1985 and is commemorated by a statue outside the ring.
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