The Puerta del Sol is the crossroads of Madrid, the meeting point of ten major roads and shopping streets. It’s no beauty, but the endless flow of shoppers and commuters give it a certain brash energy. Just a few steps away is the enticing web of streets around the Plaza Santa Ana, which slope downhill towards the Prado museum. This engaging neighbourhood of blind alleys, leaning houses and old-fashioned shops is packed with traditional tapas bars and restaurants, many still covered in turn-of-the-20th-century tiles. It’s the perfect place for a tapas, on summer weekends, the pavements are crammed all night with at least as many tourists as Madrileños. There are few reminders that this neighbourhood was once home to Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevado and other great writers of the Golden Age, but you can visit Lope de Vega’s delightful home, the Casa-Museo Lope de Vega, on Calle Cervantes. On the fringes of this bohemian barrio is the decidedly un-bohemian parliament building, the Palacio del Congreso or Las Cortes, and the sweet delights of some of Madrid’s oldest patisseries. SightsPuerta del Sol Metro Sol Puerta del Sol is one of Madrid’s main hubs, a bustling, untidy thoroughfare which marks the meeting point of several major roads and shopping streets. It’s disappointingly bland and although there is a constant flow of people, they are always on their way to somewhere else. The city council has recently made things worse by ripping out all the square’s benches (in a failed attempt to dislodge the immigrants who still stand around looking bored). It wasn’t always this way: the Puerta del Sol used to be the most piquant neighbourhood in Madrid, the steps of the convents which once stood here were well-known gossip shops, and if you needed to find an assassin in a hurry, this was the place to come. The square’s animation was legendary, then the pavement cafés were replaced with generic chain stores and fast food outlets and now there is very little to detain anybody although the 19th-century pastry shop and café, La Mallorquina is well worth a visit. The grand, pinkish building which takes up one side of the square is the former post office (now government offices) and right outside it is a plaque which marks the very centre of Spain – ‘Kilometre Zero’ – from which all distances are measured. This is also where Madrileños gather to bring in the New Year, traditionally eating one grape at each chime of the bell from the clock tower. The other famous landmark is the huge neon Tío Pepe sign, blazoned across the roof of the Hotel Paris, Madrid’s very first luxury hotel. Its days of glory have long since gone and now it’s a monument to 1950s kitsch. The usual meeting point on the square is at the ‘bear and the madroño tree’ – the big, bronze state of Madrid’s symbol which stands near the El Corte Inglés bookshop. No one quite knows how this unlikely pair came to symbolize the city, and the legends which now surround it are disappointingly prosaic – it seems most likely that the madroño tree shares the first part of its name with Madrid and that the region was once full of bears. If you want to see what a madroño tree looks like, the council have planted several along the Calle Mayor. Carrera de San Jerónimo Metro Sol or Sevilla. This street leads down from the Puerta de Sol to the Plaza Cánovas del Castillo. It used to be part of the ceremonial route from the Palacio Real on the western side of the city to the Palacio del Buen Retiro on its eastern flank, but now it’s lined with showy banks, and fancy offices. This neighbourhood is perfect for gourmets, particularly anyone with a sweet tooth. The most famous gourmet institution in all Madrid is Lhardy at Carrera de San Jerónimo 8, which was founded in 1839 by Emilio Lhardy after the French writer Prosper Mérimée (author of Carmen) urged him to introduce French pastries to the Spanish capital. It began as a patisserie and delicatessen with a nice little sideline in home-delivered cooked meals, but the business took off so rapidly that a restaurant was added upstairs. Its elegant panelled ooms provided the perfect setting for illicit love affairs among the upper classes, including Isabel II herself (a nymphomaniac, by all accounts). Plaza Santa Ana Metro Antón Martín. This square, flanked by bars, restaurants, theatres and hotels, has been the heart of the Barrio de los Literatos for centuries. It’s been overhauled a dozen times and is currently shrouded in scaffolding from its latest incarnation, which looks set to continue Madrid’s infuriating tradition of creating banal public squares. Although not especially pretty, the square’s undoubted charm lies in its vibrancy and constant animation; the pavements are lined with terraces from the dozens of tapas bars, many of which are filled with turn-of-the-20th-century fittings, and it’s one of the most popular places in Madrid for the tapeo (going from tapas bar to tapas bar). On summer nights, the pavements are dense with visitors (it’s hugely popular with tourists, especially those on the Hemingway trail), locals walking their dogs, and elderly Madrileños sitting on benches watching the world go by. It’s flanked by the Teatro Español where audiences baited Lorca with calls of ‘queer’ and ‘whore’ during the première of Yerma in 1934. Opposite the theatre is the belle époque-style Gran Hotel Victoria, a favourite with bullfighters, which has a plaque to Manolete, perhaps the most famous torero of all time. Casa-Museo Lope de Vega C Cervantes 11, T 91 429 92 16. Tue-Fri 0930-1400, Sat 1000-1400, closed Sat, Sun, Aug, holidays. Tour by guided visit only (in Spanish) €2/1.50 for concessions. Metro Antón Martín. Félix Lope de Vega (1562-1635) was one of the most prolific and charismatic writers of Madrid’s Golden Age. He wrote thousands of plays, poems and satire, poked fun at all his rivals (especially Cervantes) and still found time to lead a stormy love life which scandalized and enthralled Spanish society. Lope de Vega bought this house in 1610 and lived here until his death in 1635; he loved his new home, ‘my little house, my tranquillity, my little plot, my study’ he wrote not long after moving in, and it is now a delightfully intimate and serene museum. The peaceful, enclosed garden was Lope de Vega’s pride and joy and has been beautifully restored and filled with period furniture to look much as it would have when sat here and read five centuries ago (the staff are happy to let visitors do the same now). Lope de Vega’s bedroom and book-lined study are on the first floor, and a small grille in the bedroom overlooks the charming private chapel where Lope de Vega could watch services from his bed when he became ill towards the end of his life. Another curiosity is the curtained-off platform area where the women of the house would sit and sew on floor cushions, in the Moorish style. Lope de Vega fared better than his arch-rival Cervantes, whose former home – just up the street at the corner of Calle Léon and Calle Cervantes – was demolished in the early 19th century despite a loud chorus of public outrage. The site is now marked with a simple plaque. Calle de las Huertas Metro Antón Martín. The main business of sloping down Calle de las Huertas, like most streets in this neighbourhood, has traditionally been entertainment: once it was brothels, but now it’s lined with lively bars, restaurants, and jazz cafés. A couple of incongruously respectable monuments are tucked away, neither open to the public, which might be worth a glance. The forbidding, walled complex of the Convento de las Trinitarias Descalzas (not open to visitors) was founded in 1612 and, by curious coincidence, the daughters of Lope de Vega and Cervantes were both nuns here. Cervantes was buried here, but, in inimitable Madrileño fashion, his bones – like the bones of most of the city’s most celebrated citizens – have been lost. Calle Atocha and Cine Doré Metro Antón Martín and Atocha. Calle Atocha is one of the main road arteries of central Madrid: noisy, slightly seedy and lined with cheap pensiones and hostales. Just off Plaza Antón Martín at the top of the hill is Madrid’s most delightful cinema, the winsome, art deco Cine Doré which is now the Filmoteca Nacional. It has a very pretty café and terrace, too. Cine Doré also made an appearance in the recent Pedro Almodóvar movie Hable con ella (Talk to her). Love-struck Benigno visits the cinema to see a silent movie having adopted the interests of his comatosed “girlfriend”. Downhill, the site of the printing shop at C Atocha 87, where the first part of Cervantes’ famous novel Don Quixote was published, is slated to become a museum dedicated to the writer. Palacio del Congreso (Las Cortes) Plaza de las Cortes, C San Jerónimo, T 91 390 65 25. Guided tours about every 30 mins Sat 1000-1300, closed Aug, photo ID required. Free. Metro Banco de España or Sevilla. Spain’s government is housed in one of the dullest parliament buildings in Europe, a dreary greyish neoclassical edifice guarded by a pair of bronze lions. Inside, things liven up and it looks much more suited for the serious business of governing the country, with plenty of 19th-century plush red velvet, stained glass and enormous chandeliers. Back in 1981, Spain’s fledgling democracy came under threat when Colonel Tejero and his troops stormed the main assembly hall, firing off shots (the bullet holes can still be seen, but you have to ask discreetly) and took the Cortes hostage for more than 24 hours. The nation, listening to the drama on the radio, held its breath, but democracy finally won out when leaders of all political parties banded together in a mass demonstration through the streets of Madrid. Iglesia Jesús de Medinaceli Plaza de Jesús. Metro Antón Martín. On the first Friday of each month you’ll stumble across extraordinary queues of people snaking endlessly around the streets around the Plaza de Jesús. Some queue all night and, very occasionally, you’ll see a particularly devout old lady inching along on her knees. The object of their patient vigil is a 16th-century statue of Jesús de Medinaceli, held in the otherwise ugly church of the same name which overlooks the Plaza de Jesús. According to legend, the statue was stolen by pirates who demanded its weight in gold as ransom. But when the exchange took place and the statue was placed on the scales, it was miraculously found to weigh only as much as a single coin. The church itself replaced an earlier chapel that was notorious for its eleven o’clock masses on Sundays, which were attended by the greatest actresses of the Golden Age, all dressed in their glittering best. Just across the small square – not much more than a widening in the street – is one of Madrid’s most emblematic tiled bars, the Taberna Las Dolores.
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