Paseo de los Olmos
Takes its name from the elms that shaded this tree-lined promenade over the meadows of Arganzuela, laid out in the 18th century.
The name comes from the trees. As Madrid opened toward the south, toward the Manzanares and the Toledo road, the city gained a series of tree-lined promenades over the meadows of Arganzuela. Among them, the elms lent their shade and their name to the Paseo de los Olmos. The elm was then the urban tree par excellence in Castile, planted to cool the walker; here it marked the boundary between the built-up town and the fields sloping to the river.
Of that 18th-century woodland little more than the place-name remains. The stretch changed face in the 19th century, when industry reached Arganzuela. On the block enclosed by the Ronda de Toledo, the Paseo de las Acacias and this promenade rose Madrid’s gasworks, the famous Gasómetro, whose great metal bells stored the gas for the city’s streetlamps. It ran for more than a century, until electric light left it pointless and it was moved in 1967. On the corner with the Paseo de las Acacias the gas company headquarters still stands, heir to those furnaces.