Glorieta de Embajadores
Takes its name from the old street and field of Embajadores, where tradition places the refuge of several foreign diplomats during a medieval plague.
The name comes from a field that covered this ground when Madrid still ended here. Tradition holds that during a fifteenth-century plague the ambassadors of Tunis, Navarre, Aragon and France left the walled city and settled in the country houses of this open land to dodge the contagion. The spot was christened Campo de Embajadores, and from it came the street and, much later, this roundabout.
The square was born when Philip IV’s wall fell in 1868 and the Embajadores gate vanished with it, leaving an open junction where Embajadores, the ronda de Valencia, the ronda de Toledo, Calle de Miguel Servet and the paseo de las Acacias now meet.
The place keeps the memory of modest milestones. On 9 August 1936 the metro opened here the first stretch of the line between Sol and Embajadores. And very close by the old Tobacco Factory still breathes, where generations of Madrid cigarette makers rolled tobacco by hand.