Public Square sights in Madrid
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A
Plaza de Oriente
A royal palace that once had aspirations to be the Spanish Versailles. Sophisticated cafes watched over by apartments that cost the equivalent of a royal salary. The Teatro Real, Madrid’s opera house and one of Spain’s temples to high culture. Some of the finest sunset views in Madrid. Welcome to Plaza de Oriente, a gloriously alive monument to imperial Madrid.
At the centre of the plaza, which the palace overlooks, is an equestrian statue of Felipe IV, designed by Velázquez. If you’re wondering how a heavy bronze statue of a rider and his horse rearing up can actually maintain that stance, the answer is simple: the hind legs are solid while the front ones are hollow.…
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B
Plaza de la Puerta del Sol
The official centre point of Spain is a gracious hemisphere of elegant facades that’s often very crowded. In Madrid’s earliest days, the Puerta del Sol (Gate of the Sun) was the eastern gate of the city. Plaza de la Puerta del Sol comes into its own on New Year’s Eve, when madrileños pack into the square in their tens of thousands, waiting for the clock that gives Spain its official time to strike midnight. Look out for the statue of a bear nuzzling a madroño (strawberry tree); this is the official symbol of the city.
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C
Plaza de la Villa
The intimate Plaza de la Villa is one of Madrid’s prettiest. Enclosed on three sides by wonderfully preserved examples of 17th-century barroco madrileño (Madrid-style baroque architecture: a pleasing amalgam of brick, exposed stone and wrought iron), it was the permanent seat of Madrid’s city government from the Middle Ages until recent years when Madrid’s city council relocated to the grand Palacio de Comunicaciones on Plaza de la Cibeles.
On the western side of the square is the 17th-century former ayuntamiento (town hall), in Habsburg-style baroque with Herrerian slate-tile spires. On the opposite side of the square is the Gothic Casa de los Lujanes, whose brick…
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D
Plaza de Santa Ana
A delightful confluence of elegant architecture and irresistible energy, Plaza de Santa Ana is a gem. What it lacks in a distinguished history (it was laid out in 1810 during the reign of Joseph Bonaparte, giving breathing space to what had hitherto been one of Madrid’s most claustrophobic barrios), it more than compensates for as a focal point of the barrio’s intellectual life, overlooked by the Teatro Español and surrounded by a host of live-music venues.
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