The Habsburg Heart: Madrid's Imperial Squares

Puerta del Sol

The heart of Madrid, home to Kilometer Zero, the clock that rings in the Spanish New Year, and the Bear and the Strawberry Tree.

You are standing at kilometer zero, the navel of Spain. Every radial road in the country begins its count right here, where a small stone plaque sits on the pavement in front of the old post office. That building, the Real Casa de Correos, went up in 1768 to a design by the French architect Jaime Marquet. Its clock tower was added in 1866, and on New Year's Eve it is the clock every Spaniard watches.

At each stroke of midnight, you eat one grape. Twelve strokes, twelve grapes, and if you manage all twelve in time, luck for the year ahead. The tradition has been broadcast on national television since 1962. The square itself began as the eastern gate of the medieval city wall, the gate that faced the rising sun.

Little of that wall remains. What you see now is a broad, half-moon plaza where Calle Mayor, Calle del Arenal, and a half-dozen other streets collide. Behind you, near the metro entrance, is the bronze Bear and the Strawberry Tree, the symbol of Madrid. It is the city's default meeting point: people do not say "meet me at Sol." They say "meet me at the bear." Walk to the left side of the Casa de Correos and find Calle del Arenal.

A few doors down, on your right, a narrow passage called the Pasadizo de San Ginés cuts through the block. Duck into it.

Chocolatería San Ginés

Madrid's most famous chocolatería, pouring thick hot chocolate and frying churros in a hidden pasadizo since 1894.

You are inside a Madrid ritual that began in 1894. This space opened as an inn in 1890, but four years later it became a churrería, and it has been frying churros ever since. The green walls, the white marble tables, the low light: it looks much as it did when theatre crowds spilled in from the Eslava next door, or when Valle-Inclán wrote it into his play Luces de Bohemia as the "buñolería modernista." During the Second Republic, regulars called it La Escondida, the hidden one, because the passage outside is easy to miss. That seclusion is long gone.

The place now turns out around four thousand churros a day. But the chocolate is still made from the house recipe, thick and dark, served in a white cup. Dip, bite, repeat. The place never closes: 24 hours, 365 days a year.

The first chocolate of the new year is drunk here, just after the grapes.

Plaza Mayor

The great arcaded square of Habsburg Madrid, completed in 1619, where bullfights, markets, and royal pageants once filled the cobblestones.

This is the rectangle that held imperial Spain. Completed in 1619 under Philip III, the Plaza Mayor was designed by Juan Gómez de Mora as a uniform stage for the monarchy. Bullfights, canonisations, and autos-da-fé all happened on this pavement. The king and queen watched from the royal balcony of the Casa de la Panadería, the twin-towered building on the north side.

Its facade now carries frescoes painted by Carlos Franco in 1992, a modern layer on a building that began as the city bakery in 1590. The square has burned three times, most severely in 1790. Juan de Villanueva rebuilt it afterward, lowering the rooflines and closing the corners. The equestrian statue of Philip III in the centre was cast in Florence by Giambologna and finished by Pietro Tacca in 1616.

It stood at the Casa de Campo for more than two centuries before Queen Isabella II moved it here in 1848. Walk to the southwest corner and find the Arco de Cuchilleros. Its steep steps drop to the Calle de los Cuchilleros, the street of the knife-makers who once supplied the butchers of the plaza. The buildings here slope outward because they double as buttresses.

When you are ready, head through the arch on the west side that leads toward the Mercado de San Miguel.