Plaza de Oriente

It is hard to find a place in Madrid where dusk is more spectacular than Plaza de Oriente. At that time of the day, the off-white stone of the Royal Palace gets silver or sand like, according to the season of the year, and the horizon looks like the sea.

After walking in the narrow and winding Madrid de los Austrias, the Madrid de los Borbones is elegant and open, and makes one breathe deeply and fill their lungs with air. Above the invisible Manzanares river, where in the 9th century there was a Muslim castle, there is now the great palace, the biggest in Western Europe, finished in 1764 under the reign of Carlos III.

Plaza de Oriente is one of the most emblematic places in Madrid. I love walking in the city and the surroundings. The visit is of course essential for any visitor.

It is located in the historical center, its main driving force came from José Bonaparte (who reigned in Spain between 1808 and 1813), who ordered that the buildings around the Royal Palace would be torn down, as part of a new urban planning including the opening of streets in the capital. This is why the monarch is known as Pepe Plazuelas (in Spanish Pepe is the usual nickname for José and Plazuelas means small squares). The final design was established in 1844 by Narciso Pascual y Colomer and is squared, flanked with statues of the Spanish monarchs and dominated by the Royal Palace.

My favorite square in Madrid... A dreamy place, that impresses you ever time you go, suddenly, as you come from Arenal street, La Latina or Plaza de España. It does not matter how many times you saw it, this square radiates romanticism and magic.

The whole place smells like myrtles decorating the labyrinth garden surrounding the statues of the old medieval kings (I love spending some time reading their inscriptions)... Close by, on the facade of the Palace, children skate and the street musicians play. On the other end of the square people go out from the Opera of "El Real", in the gardens some friends eat kebabs bought in Arenal and a man takes a nap, his head covered by a newspaper...