Marvelous Madrid: Self-Guided Audio Walking Tour

Plaza de España, the Plaza of Spain, is one of Madrid’s largest city squares. The city has many monuments dedicated to Cervantes the great writer of Don Quixote, and the most interesting is located here on Plaza de España.

The Palace of the Senate, found on the Plaza de Marina Espanola, is an elegant three-storied building in the neoclassical style which serves as the home of the Spanish parliament’s upper house. A huge number of books and artistic treasures have graced the palace, most particularly an altarpiece by El Greco which remains the most enigmatic work by the famous artist.

The Royal Convent of La Encarnación, which means of the incarnation, is a sober stone building with an imposing facade, sparsely embellished with colonnade and bas relief. The building is one of Madrid’s most important religious centres. The convent is the property of the monastic order of the Augustinians, and has remained without interruption to this day what it has been since its foundation, a thriving convent of devout nuns.

Laid out on the approach to the northern facade of the Royal Palace, the Sabatini Gardens, covering an area of more than 2.5 hectares, are a study in geometric perfection. The ideals of symmetry are present not only in the gardens’ flower beds and paths, but even in the forms of the plants themselves. The effect is most noticeable looking down from Ballén Street, which leads to the palace. Taken together, the ponds and fountains, and tightly clipped hedges and trees, all seem to indicate the hand of a gardener fascinated by mathematics.

The Plaza de Oriente takes its name from its position on the eastern side of the Royal Palace. The equine statue of Phillip IV, a 12-metre high monument of sophisticated design, not only spatially dominates the plaza, but is also considered a masterpiece of art and engineering. The massive bronze sculpture which crowns the monument was the work of the outstanding 17th century Italian sculptor Pietro Tacca, based on a design by Diego Velazquez and the technical calculations of Galileo Galilei.

The Palacio Real de Madrid, or the Royal Palace of Madrid, is an enormous Baroque style construction of white and grey stone with an area of 135,000 square metres, making it the largest royal residence in all of Western Europe. Within the palace there are over 3,000 rooms, some of which are accessible to the public. The interiors display the height of regal luxury: sculptures, painting and frescoes executed by the finest European masters, crystal and silver chandeliers, Flemish tapestries, furniture of many styles and eras, the world’s only complete Stradivarius string quartet, and Spain’s finest collection of antique armour and weapons. The wealth of the collection makes the Royal Palace one of Madrid’s finest museums; if you have the time, make sure to visit.

Almudena was Madrid’s first cathedral, as for a number of years the administrative capital was subject in religious matters to the traditional holy city of Toledo. The cathedral is as distinctive for its size (102 metres in length and 69 metres in height as it is for the variety of its styles of architecture. Its dome is neo baroque in style, and its facade is neoclassical but incorporating elements of the Herreriano style developed locally in Spain at the end of the 16th century.

The Church of Sacramento, or Iglesia del Sacramento, the church of the holy mystery, is one of the most beautiful and elegant churches in Madrid. Officially, it bears the proud name Church of the Armed Forces, as the structure was obtained by the Ministry of Defence to provide a new headquarters for the military archdiocese. The Spanish military archdiocese is a separate branch of the Catholic church, a special organisation with its own churches and hierarchy, which engages with religious questions exclusively for the nation’s soldiers and their families.

The Church of San Pedro el Viejo is one of the city’s most iconic buildings. The approaching visitor is greeted first by the high cubic bell tower. The building of the 30-metre tower was allegedly ordered by King Alfonso XI, to celebrate one of the key victories of the Reconquista, namely, the restoration of the town of Algeciras to the Spanish throne in 1354. However, many researchers think the tower is a little bit older, and originally served as the minaret for a mosque which occupied this location.

The Royal Basilica of San Francisco el Grande stands on the Plaza of San Francisco, but its magnificent dome can be seen from many points of the city. The dome stretches 58 metres into the sky and has a diameter of 33 metres. The church was built in the neoclassical style in the second half of the 18th century as part of a Franciscan convent, on the site of an old chapel which, supposedly, was near a former home of St Francis of Assisi. However, it is very doubtful that the famous founder of the Franciscan order ever visited Madrid.