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The name Madrid de los Austrias derives from the
Hapsburg dynasty which came to rule over Castile and Aragón
with Carlos I in 1516 and saw their merging into the country
of Spain. (In fact, Spain during this time came to occupy
the whole of the Iberian peninsula, encompassing Portugal
as well.) In 1561, the capital of the kingdom of Castile was
Toledo. It is not entirely clear exactly why it was moved
to Madrid, except that Philip II found
Toledo too cold. It was shifted to Valladolid again for
a time before moving back definitively to Madrid in 1606.
Before this, Madrid was not even a city as such, but an important
town or villa, lacking a cathedral. Hence, the description
of Madrid as villa y corte. During the seventeen century,
the works and building needed to condition it for its new
role left it with the characteristic, remarkably homogeneous
appearance that can still be seen.
Madrid is dotted with buildings representing its Hapsburg
period and it would be meaningless and nearly impossible to
gel them all into a single route. The arrows on the map represent
a photo-expedition we embarked upon recently, with an extension
so you can take in another two or three sights. It is an easy
route to follow, though you may prefer just to potter. We
began at the  Puerta
del Sol, the spiritual centre of Madrid and almost the geographical
centre of Spain. It contains the punto kilométrico cero,
kilometre-point zero, from which all distances on national
highways throughout the country are measured. To call the
Puerta del Sol bustling is woefully inadequate – it
roars rather than hums with life – shoppers, office workers,
deliverymen and, it must be said, pickpockets. Immigrants
and young people rendezvous here, seemingly at all times of
day. And it is the most popular place in Spain for demonstrations.
The Palacio de la Comunidad is a handsome, eighteenth-century
building which houses the famous clock from which the bells
sound to bring in the New Year in Spain. It was originally
the post office, but has more sinister associations as the
home in Franco's time to the Dirección de Seguridad del
Estado, secret police, when it was as feared as Moscow's
Lubiyanka. The streets behind it are pleasingly narrow and
chaotic, the shops keeping vestiges of the old divisions into
trades or types of goods. There are many haberdashers', drapers'
and cutlers'.
If you drift east from here, you remain within Hapsburg Madrid,
but many guide books rather arbitrarily tend to separate Madrid
de los Austrias from Madrid de las Letras, literary
Madrid, which gives us an excuse to do the same. Reaching
the top of the Calle Esparteros you find the Plaza Santa Cruz
and, on the other side of it, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
another Hapsburg building with its typical red brick, dark
grey slate roof and spire-like tower. This building was originally
the Cárcel de Corte, the Court Jail, though from the
outside there is nothing about it to suggest anything more
ominous  than
its sister buildings we shall meet later.
Heading generally downwards, following the Calle Imperial
which runs into the Calle Toledo, takes you to the puzzlingly
named Puerta Cerrada (closed gate), equally puzzlingly signposted
as the
 Plaza
del Fontecillo when you reach it. This is something of a gastronomic
centre, although it is not obvious at first sight. On the
other side of the road is the Cava Baja, a shadowy street
full of restaurants and other eateries, including a couple
of the best in Madrid. The mesones, taverns, around
Puerta Cerrada itself, the other side of the cross, are not
especially interesting, but
Casa Paco, a venerable restaurant camouflaged behind an
unprepossessing bar, serves some of the best meat available
in Madrid. Going up from here along the Calle Cuchilleros
(Cutlers' Street, another vestige) takes you past the famous
Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world, and a host of other
establishments, some of which look touristy but are not, while
others do not but are.
Next page > Plaza Mayor
and Plaza de la Villa > Page 1, 2
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