Welcome to Madrid
 Spain's capital is a lively city - nobody is exactly sure when the Madrilenos sleep. It may be the afternoon siesta that gives them the endurance to keep things going well into the night. Try it.
The city is by European standards relatively new -it became capital only in 1561- but today Madrid spreads out all over the place. Fortunately, much of interest lies within the area that can be seen on foot. Check out Calle and Plaza Mayor (medieval Madrid) which is lined by beautiful buildings and the city's oldest church San Nicolas de los Servitas (plan several hours for this section). Then go shopping at Calle Serrano and the Gran Via. Visit the Victory Arch the Palacio Real (the royal palace with its own art treasures and crown jewels) the Rastro Flea Market and the Plaza de las Cibeles and Puerta del Sol (the last two are major intersections with fountains monuments and shops).
 Madrid is a museum goer's paradise. Including the Royal Palace, it has 15 important museums, dozens of galleries and several private collections. See the section on the art walk for more details about the three famous museums in Madrid: the Prado, the Thyssen Bornemisza and the Reina Sofia museum. You might end up spending more than one day just seeing museums. Actually, days could be spent in the halls of the Prado alone.
It's actually quite possible to get tired of all these museums in Madrid; if this happens sit down at a terrazas (outdoor cafe) and watch the world go by or visit one of the many beautiful parks and lakes in the city. One of the nicest parks we've seen anywhere is Retiro Park near the Prado. Note the Victorian greenhouse and the Crystal Palace with its small lake and swans lazily swimming about. You can rent a rowboat to get in the relaxed festive mood that suffuses the park. For a panoramic view of Madrid take the elevator to the bar on the 26th floor of the Edificio de Espana which faces the Plaza de Espana.
Madrid is a city that never seems to close down-bars and restaurants are open very late and the city's Santa Ana district never closes down. Dinner doesn't usually begin until after 10 pm and after that revelers head off to their favorite disco show, jazz club or late-night cafe to play until dawn. For a concentrated area of late-night activity head to Huertas Street after midnight and you're sure to find something to match your tastes. Hemingway fans may want to check out the Museo Chicote bar described in many of his Spanish Civil War stories (and a very trendy spot). Those who love traditional performing arts will want to go to the Teatro Real for Spanish light opera known as zarzuela. You can also find good flamenco shows in several nightclubs including Cafe Chinitas.
If you're in Madrid during the second half of May be sure to join Madrilenos in celebrating the Feria de San Isidro which has music, operas, concerts, bullfighting dancing and all-night entertainment. During our last trip, we attended a concert devoted to American bluegrass music held in the Plaza Mayor. And mid August is when the city celebrates the Verbena de la Paloma. Outside of Madrid day trips can be made to Avila, El Escorial, Guadalajara, Segovia and Toledo.
Situated on the 40th parallel (on the Castilian
Meseta), Madrid occupies the geographical center of the
Iberian Peninsula. The city stands at a height of 2,200 feet
above sea level, its buildings rooted in the sandy soil of
some low hills. It is sufficient to say that the reproductions
of its luminous skies gave world fame to the best painter of
all times: Velázquez. The beautiful skies of Madrid have since
been described as "Velasqueños".
Hotels in Madrid:
Madrid enjoys more
cloudless days than almost any other city in Europe. The
average atmospheric pressure is 706 mm. The air is purified in
the peaks and pine groves of the nearby Guadarrama mountain
range. Spring in Madrid is a season of bright sunshine and
cool breezes. In autumn there are those clear blue Velázquez
skies and the air is warm.
Over the last ten or
fifteen years Madrid has grown by leaps and bounds. The
population is now four million and the city spreads over an
are of 607 square kilometers. There is much of great
historical interest and some things that are modern and of
undoubted value.
We have the Madrid of the House of Austria, the Madrid of
Bourbon Kinds, Goya's Madrid, the Madrid of the Prado Museum,
and the Madrid of the Romantics or Isabelline. There is the
commercial, financial and industrial Madrid as well as the
picturesque Madrid of the Rastro (a sort of flea market); the
Bull-fighting Madrid; the "Flamenco" Madrid with its singers,
dancers and guitarist; and the Madrid of antique dealers and
artists. We shall get to know them all in due course.
Food and
wine
The morning's round of sight-seeing and museum-touring
over, the visitor's appetite is whetted for something to eat
and drink. Besides the up-to-date restaurants which have very
dish under the sun on their menus, there is the very varied
Spanish cooking.
To begin with, Madrid has a few famous old restaurants,
some having been in existence for over two hundred years,
where the most typical dishes of the Madrid and Castilian
cooking can be savored: typical restaurants where regional
dishes can be enjoyed such as "paella valenciana" (rice,
colored with saffron and mixed with different types of
shell-fish, chicken and other ingredients), "bacalao a la
vizcaina" (cod, tomato, thyme, red pepper, bayleaf, onion,
garlic and fried croutons), "Pollo a la chilindrón" (chicken
fried in oil and garlic and served in a sauce made of onion,
pimientos, tomatoes, slices of ham and various other
ingredients), "fabada" (a stew made of excellent haricot
beans, Galician ham, pigs' ears, a special kind of black
sausage, fresh bacon, smoked bacon and other ingredients),
"cochinillo a la segoviana" (sucking ping roasted either in
the oven or over a wood-fire and basted with lard and
seasoning until the skin is golden brown) or a "gazpacho" (an
Andalusian speciality: cold raw vegetable soup served in
summer and best described as a liquid salad). The visitor will
also find German, Italian, Swedish, French and Chinese
restaurants, as well as from other countries.
Aperitifs
Local custom demands that we
should have an aperitif or appetizer before lunch or dinner,
and then a coffee afterwards, out of doors when the weather
allows, in one of the capital's many cafés and bars. Although
only a few of the old-time cafés have survived, one can have
an aperitif anywhere. There are certain bars, round the Puerta
del Sol, San Jerónimo, Victoria, Cruz, Espoz y Mina, Núñez de
Arce, Correo, Tetuán and other little streets in the
neighborhood, which are particularly well-famed for the shell
fish they serve with their drinks.
Shopping
The afternoon is a
good time, especially for tourists visiting Madrid, to have a
look round the big stores and saunter down the main streets in
the shopping center. In Madrid one may acquire artistic
products of rich and varied Spanish handicraft: rugs,
tapestries, fans, cloaks, porcelain, ceramic ware, cast iron,
wooden statues, objects of gold and silver, among many more;
high fashion articles, "ready to wear", perfumes, jewelry and
costume jewelry, leather goods--shoes, handbags, luggage,
gloves--antelope and suede, etc. Sporting goods of all
kinds--rackets, firearms, boats, etc.--all fulfill two
important shopper requirements; superb quality at a moderate
price.
Culture And
Arts
Five
Academies
Madrid has five great academies: the Academy
of the Spanish Language (Calle de Felipe IV), History (León,
21), Exact Science (Valverde, 22), Medicine (Arrieta, 12) and
the San Fernando Fine Arts Academy (Alcalá, 13). There are
also Academies of Jurisprudence and the so-called "Ciencias
Morales y Politicas" (Academy of Moral and Political
Sciences). The Associations of Writers and Artists (Leganitos,
10); of Painters and Sculptors (Infantas, 30); organize
interesting cultural and artistic events.
The
University cities
Madrid has two Universities, the
Complutense and the Autonomous one. The Complutense is located
on and old estate known as La Moncloa, to the West of Madrid.
All the Faculties and Colleges are housed in modern,
functional buildings, surrounded by gardens and avenues. There
are also various Residential Colleges and sports facilities of
all types connected to the University City.
The
Autonomous University is of more recent construction, and is
at Canto Blanco, 15 kilometers along the Colmenar road.
The Higher Council for Scientific
The Higher
Council for Scientific Research is at 117 Calle de Serrano and
includes all the different cultural institutes for which it
acts as the coordinating center. The modern buildings contain
large lecture halls which are used for international
conferences, libraries for each speciality, and residences in
which the research workers live.
The four most
important public libraries
Although there are something
like a hundred libraries in Madrid, the visitor who is not
looking for some special information, but the kind which can
easily be obtained by private inquiries, should be satisfied
if he gets round to seeing the four most important ones. First
of all, there is the National Library, Paseo de Recoletos, 20.
It is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. except Sunday and is situated
on the first floor of the Library and Museum Building. It is
considered to be the best library in Spain, and contains about
two million volumes, twenty-one thousand of which are
manuscripts, two thousand five hundred incunabula, and
forty-six thousand particularly rare books. There are also
many books from the Golden Age of Spanish literature--the 16th
century.
The second most important library is the
Biblioteca Municipal, at number 78, Calle de Fuencarral. There
are about a hundred and twenty thousand books in the library,
many of them very rare. More than four thousand of them are
devoted to Madrid. The Ateneo, at Calle del Prado, 21, also
has a good library. It is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., except
on Sunday.
The fourth of our libraries is the Biblioteca Real, which
is located on the ground-floor of the Royal Palace. (It is
open from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on weekdays). The library
contains 250.000 volumes, many in manuscript form, some
exceedingly rare and others quite unique. The chief treasures
are nevertheless the Books of Hours; there is one particularly
fine specimen which belonged to Queen Isabella the Catholic.
This library has a rich display of magnificent bindings of all
styles and periods.
Antiques
Madrid is good
place for buying antiques. There are a number of places where
they can be found, although the most popular is probably the
Rastro. This is a sort of flea market with its stalls down
both sides of the street, and curiosity shops and antique
dealers behind. Some of these shops have now become quite
large store and good bargains can sometimes be picked up by
connoisseurs. Madrid has one street which is almost entirely
devoted to antique dealer's shops; the Calle del Prado.
There are also a number of curiosity shops in the
neighboring Plaza de las Cortes, Carrera de San Jerónimo and
others. Some of these dealers specialize in paintings, others
in woodcarvings, books, china or glassware, ivory, furniture,
religious sculpture, etc. In each there is a little of
everything.
Exhibitions of painting and sculpture
and artists' studios
Apart from the galleries of Old
Masters or the permanent exhibitions of ancient works of art,
there are nearly forty galleries where the works of
contemporary painters are exhibited. The most outstanding are:
the Dirección General de Patrimonio Artístico, Archivos y
Museos, an officially sponsored body for fostering the Fine
Arts, with its headquarters in the Palacio de Bibliotecas y
Museos, the Ateneo, and the Círculo de Bellas Artes. The names
and addresses of leading painters now working in Madrid can be
obtained at any of these galleries.
Museums
Madrid has magnificent painting museums where the
visitor can admire some of the most famous works of art by
classic and contemporary masters. There are also museums
dedicated to sculpture, archaeology, science and other areas.
Without a doubt, the most important is the Prado
Museum. The thousands of visitors who visit the museum very
year can see marvelous works of Spanish and European painting
from the 12th to the 18th century.
Picasso's famous
"Gernica" which was returned to Spainby New York's Modern Art
Museum, is currently on show in the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
National Museum with all of its preliminary sketches and
drawings.
Stroll Around Old
Madrid Before Dinner
It is essential
for anybody who wants to enter into the spirit of Madrid life
to have a stroll before dinner. Just as it is the custom to
have an aperitif at one of the smart bars or cafés, so one is
called upon to go on a pub-crawl through the heart of Madrid
from eight o'clock in the evening until dinner-time, which
here means any time from ten until eleven.
The thing to ask for is a "chato", a small glass of red or
white wine, which is accompanied by "pichos" or
"tapas"--tidbits of fried fish, veal, prawns (either plain or
fried in butter), fish in oil and vinegar, cheese, mussels or
slices of sausage.
The best places to go to are the
bullfighters taverns in the Calle de la Victoria, Espoz y
Mina, Cruz Núñez de Arce and other picturesque little streets
called San Ricardo, Cáiz, del Pozo and Alvarez Gato. Another
taverns district centers around the Calle de Echegaray and the
Travesía de Fernández y González. These streets are all very
crowded and gay at this time of the evening.
There is another stroll one might take, through the
old-world Madrid of Galdós (the Spanish Dickens), along the
Calle de Postas, San Cristóbal, and the little streets round
the Plaza Mayor. There are a number of taverns in the square
itself, and under the steps that lead down to the Arcos de
Chichilleros.
Night-life
Madrid is quite
different from any other European capital after dark. This is
mainly because people here do not only go to theaters,
cinemas, and night-clubs; they also sit in cafés after dinner
and have a coffee or a beer, or they may go for a walk. All
this means that the streets in the center of Madrid are
abustle with people until the wee small hours of the morning.
Nightowls can take their choice among several nightclubs both
in the city center and on the outskirts which have
cosmopolitan floor shows.
Flamenco
Gypsy
dancing and singing, or Andalusian Flamenco, has many
supporters in Madrid. In addition to the theaters which
specialize in Flamenco, and the cabarets and nightclubs which
always have a Flalmenco number in their floor-shows, there are
certain special clubs where the real connoisseurs go. These
include the "Corral de la Morería", "Arco de Cuchilleros",
"Los Canasteros", "Café de Chinitas", "Torres Bermejas", the
"Corral de la Pacheca" and a number of others.
Young Madrid
Arquelles, Salamanca, Malasaña,
the Plaza Mayor, Paseo de la Castellana and surrounding
streets are the districts of Madrid where Spanish youth can
have a good time. Especially popular are the nostalgic or
traditional cafés, beer pubs, typical "tascas" (bars) and
taverns, discotheques, all kinds of pubs (disco pubs, piano
pubs, gallery pubs, etc.), or night spots dedicated to all
sorts of music: folk, jazz, rock, South American or classical.
All this is profusely distributed throughout the parts of
Madrid we mentioned before.
If you
prefer the theater, opera, concerts, there are many large and
comfortable cinemas in the center of Madrid, where it is
possible to see the latest Spanish and foreign films.
There are about twenty theaters well worth a visit.
The María Guerrero, the Español and Zarzuela Theaters are
government sponsored. Both the Español and the María Guerrero
often put on plays by Calderón, Lope de Vega and other Spanish
classical authors or translations of widely acclaimed
international successes. There are theaters which alternate
various Spanish comedies and tragedies as well as translations
of foreign plays and these are the theaters: Lara, Cómico,
Ariequín, Goya, Club, Marquina, Beatriz, Bellas Artes,
comedia, Figaro, Infanta Isabel, Reina Victoria and
Valle-Inclán.
The Teatro Real of Teatro de la Opera is dedicated
exclusively to concerts. The Zarzuela Theatre covers
especially the opera, ballet and "Zarzuela" (Spanish light
opera) seasons. Other theaters put on reviews varying in
quality; Alcázar, Martín and La Latina. The Calderón and
Maravillas Theaters are mainly used for musical shows.
Sunda Sunshine In
Madrid
There are three
places that both tourists and thousands of residents in Madrid
often go to in order to assuage their curiosity on fine Sunday
mornings: the Rastro, the Stamp Market in the Plaza Mayor, and
the second-hand bookstalls on the Cuesta de Moyano.
The Rastro
Every bit city in the world has
its "flea market". Here in Madrid it is called the "Rastro".
It is a very picturesque place, and every kind of article can
be bought there, including the oddest of odds and ends. The
Rastro is divided into two parts: antiques, and second-hand
goods.
The observant buyer may pick up a good painting, a Gothic
statue or a piece of period furniture. Another may find the
household utensil he needs or a bullfighter's second-hand
"suit of lights". A Sunday morning spent in the Rastro is
quite a unique experience, both entertaining and quaint. Few
come away empty-handed for there is always something that
catches one's fancy among all the unwanted jumble.
The
numismatic-stamp market in the Plaza Mayor Every Sunday from
around eleven o'clock until about one, the Stamp and Coin
Market throbs with life under the arcades of the Plaza Mayor.
Stamps from all over the world change hands, while schoolboys
rub shoulders with experts in search of bargains. Indeed there
are many who have turned this innocent pastime into a
large-scale international gamble.
Hotel
capacity
The capital city
and the province of Madrid have a total of 38.564 beds for the
visitor spread out among 6 five-star hotels, 60 four-star, 57
three-star, 28 two star, and 12 one-star hotels. It also has a
total of 1.476 beds in Apartment-hotels. These include 4
four-star establishments, 2 three-star, and 1 one-star. Other
lodging facilities include places for accommodation in 24
camping sites.
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