THE Center with Madrid dos Austrias, the Gran Via district, Malasana and Chueca: last week, we gave you a good overview of the “greatest hits” of the Spanish capital by walking through its central districts.
But big cities like Madrid are still a sum of all their parts, and not just the three out of four that make up the urban core.
Madrid’s B-side’s greatest hits
This is why today we are going to familiarize ourselves with the other residential areas of the city center, but also with certain peripheral areas. Together they constitute a fascinating mix of chic and popular, historical and colorful.
We start with the most historic of all, the Barrio de las Letras.
The reason this neighborhood has so many stories to tell is very simple: it took so many years to accumulate them. Because it was there that, in the beginnings of royal Madrid, all those who wanted to benefit from the presence of the newly created court – adventurers and skilled artisans, but also writers and artists – came to settle, simply because it was nowhere to go. .
Today, people strolling along Calle de las Huertas and nearby streets in the neighborhood’s center are reminded of the area’s literary past wherever they pass.
THE Mail It is also the part of the city where Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Spain’s most famous literary work, spent almost his entire life. However, only one of his many residences can be identified with certainty: it is the house where he died, located at the corner of rue de Leon and rue Francos.
In 1833, the man who had become the owner of the building, apparently in very poor condition, applied for a permit to demolish it, when, at the last minute, King Ferdinand intervened to ask to delay the destruction of the building. until his government raised the funds to purchase the house and turn it into a museum.
The owner, no doubt flattered by the royal interest in his business dealings, weighed the royal request – then, after carefully considering all aspects, had the building demolished anyway (my favorite of all the stories about the Neighborhood), the commemorative plaques that you can see today at 2 Cervantes Street actually decorate a fairly recent construction.
Moreover, the former residence of Lope de Vega, the other key figure of the golden age of Spanish literature, still stands a few houses further on Calle Cervantes and has been rather well preserved…
…but still, few people want to take a photo of it. After all: everyone knows Don Quixote, but who has ever heard of Lope? The sheep wellapparently the greatest success of the Spanish Golden Age scene?
Modern times have not been very kind to Lope – and have not even spared him the posthumous indignity of seeing his old home street named after his bitter rival. (He and Cervantes did not get along well, by all accounts.)
The literary traditions of the Barrio de las Letras continued into the 20th centuryth century by Madrid’s most famous occasional resident, Ernest Hemingway, who often came to El Sobrino de Botin restaurant, located at 17 Calle de Cuchilleros: to eat, to drink, but often also simply to write, sometimes from early morning until late dinner time. a table that the owner – who was also a friend of Hemingway – had set up for him on the top, less frequented floor of the restaurant.
Maybe a little THANKSHemingway later used Botin’s as the location for the final scene of his first novel The sun is also rising. Star-crossed lovers Jake and his former girlfriend Brett have a meal together, board a taxi and – we have to assume – go their separate ways forever.
“We had lunch upstairs at Botins. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. …Brett hasn’t eaten much. She never ate much. I ate a very large meal and drank three bottles of Rioja Alta.
Which is a lot of alcohol, even for a Hemingway character. Jake seemed to enjoy a drink no less than Don Ernesto himself and would certainly have enjoyed the nearby La Latina, the longest and most picturesque drinks counter in the Spanish capital.
Built on the site of a medieval Islamic fort, La Latina today is centered on two parallel main streets – Calle de la Cava Baja and Calle de la Cava Alta – lined with taverns and canteens.
The best time to study and admire the often quite beautiful interiors of the neighborhood’s watering holes is in the afternoon…
…because after dusk they quickly fill with noise, laughter and shuffling of feet. If Madrid is a city that never sleeps, La Latina is the place where it stays awake into the wee hours.
On its eastern side, beyond Calle de Toledo, the Neighborhood transforms into Lavapiés, just as lively and colorful, although in a different way and schedule.
Lavapiés has always been the neighborhood of people who have to work hard to earn a living, and in recent times it has become the hub of immigrants from all over the world.
It is also the best place to study corralsthe typical Madrid buildings whose “passages in the sky” revolve around an interior courtyard.
You can see a typical example of this type of building on the corner of Tribulete and Mesón de Paredes.
At the eastern corner of Lavapiés begins the Paseo del Prado, a gateway to a completely different world. Salamanca, north of Retiro Park, is the most expensive neighborhood in Madrid.
At its heart are three streets running parallel to each other, of which Calle de Lagasca to the east is the quietest, a sequence of beautiful apartment buildings sometimes embellished with a private clinic or gourmet café.
Calle de Coello, in the middle of the three streets, is a little livelier: just as green and lined with equally beautiful residential buildings, it is home to more boutiques, generally quite chic, many of which offer fashion brands that can be curiously unfamiliar to non-Spaniards. (Silvia Navarro, Meermin).
In contrast, Calle Serrano and Calle Ortega y Gasset, which mark the western and northern borders of central Salamanca respectively, are both multi-lane highways lined with stores from the world’s biggest designer names.
Salamanca’s southern border is defined by the Retiro, Madrid’s most famous public garden, …
…which also gave its name to the neighborhood around it, although this area is only made up of a thin layer of hotels, government buildings and museums.
If you are looking for a park, we suggest Casa de Campo to the west of the Royal Palace. (We posted an article about this on a previous visit, but it got lost in cyberspace when we converted our website to a different format.)
Even more interesting is a trip to one of the outer districts of Madrid. Okay: these suburbs can often seem a little gloomy, and if central Madrid isn’t doing well (as we said last week), Madrid’s outskirts are even more dismissive of the idea.
But these neighborhoods are also elements of the sum that constitutes the city. We offer you a trip to Tetouan, in the north, located on the urban outskirts of the capital, which is also home to the largest covered market in Spain and, incidentally, in all of Europe.
THE Maravillas Market on Calle de Bravo Murillo (metro station: Quatro Caminos) has more than 200 fruit and vegetable stands from around the world as well as a wide range of small restaurants and tapas bars.
Alternatively (or in addition), you can also accompany us on a walk in the peripheral district of Arganzuela to discover the new tourist attraction of the city.
We’ll talk about it again next week!