Los Austrias

On the official street map it is the Palacio quarter, after the Royal Palace raised on the site of the old Alcázar, the fortress that burned down on a Christmas Eve in 1734. It was the first Madrid, the one that became the capital and grew in the shadow of the Habsburgs. Down its slopes the old water channels ran toward the river, and in the orchards the almond and the pomegranate grew. There was a Moorish quarter before there was Christendom; dyers and Milanese hung out their cloths, and a pillar of justice presided over the corner where now only the name remains. Today, in its maze of slopes, everything still sounds of the court: the mirror and the folding screen, the cord and the collar trim, the straw and the raisin of fair days. Small names of goods and trades, arranged at the foot of a palace.