Avenida del Planetario

The Avenida del Planetario owes its name to Madrid’s Planetarium, opened in 1986 inside the Enrique Tierno Galván park. It rose on land in the south of the city occupied for decades by railway facilities, dismantled before the redevelopment of the 1980s. Beneath the hemispherical dome of its main hall, some two hundred and forty-five seats recline so the audience can watch the projected starry sky that light pollution makes almost invisible to the naked eye. The name spread to the whole area: even the nearby metro station is called Arganzuela-Planetario. The avenue crosses the park through a tunnel and links Embajadores with Méndez Álvaro, along a stretch reclaimed from the old railway tracks.