Barcelona Studio 2007: Madrid

Madrid was our first stop. It is by far the largest city in Spain, although its hard to tell when you are downtown because it is really spread out. It has a lot of turn of the century buildings along Gran Via. In a separate section nearby, their 1500s city is preserved. I love that about Spain / Europe...They preserve their different historical areas and build new neighborhoods in neighboring sections instead of tearing down everything. This allows for you to go into these separate areas of town and feel like you are thrown back in time. These cities are almost like living museums; they're better than museum though because they are still inhabited and adapted for contemporary uses. The photo below is a good urban snapshot of Madrid´s turn of the century downtown area along Gran Via.

I had a really fun time in Madrid even though the weather was really cold and the sky was spitting snow. It was interesting to see what another Spanish city looked like, and it was also good to get away from BCN (even though I love it here). Barcelona blows Madrid away in terms of architecture, art, and over all hipness...but Madrid had its own interesting points.

The cold winter sky in Madrid

Madrid´s very modern, bright airport was a nice welcome. The huge undulating roof was very interesting.

A downtown movie house with interesting tile work. I liken this technique to exterior ¨wallpaper¨. As you can see, Spain is just a month or two behind on most of the movie releases.

Beautiful Parque de Retiro with its monumental statues

Fun at the Park on this interesting piece of equipment where you shifted your body weight in order to spin really fast...it was almost too fast.

Madrid´s old city had a very different feel than BCN´s old town. It was more picturesque than Barcelona´s (for the most part). This is no doubt due to the fact that no one forced Madrid to stay in one small area for hundreds of years. (Madrid forced Barcelona to remain with in its city walls until the 1800s.) This allowed Madrid to keep its area intact and build during the next building boom in a new area. BCN had to tear down parts of its old town to make it more dense.

Plaza Mayor, site of our first sketching assignment. This plaza was site of many beheadings in the past and a popular tourist destination today.

This is the former palace for the King and Queen of Spain. It overlooks a vast park on one side, an urban plaza on the front, the cathedral (not complete until 1993!) on another side, and the city sprawls out below on the back side. It now mostly serves as a museum.