Plaza circular

The plaza Circular owes its name to its own outline: a small meeting of streets resolved with a round layout in the Castilla district, north of Madrid, near the paseo de la Castellana. Naming a plaza for its geometry is an old habit of Madrid’s street map, which alongside the names of saints, kings, and battles keeps purely descriptive place-names. No record survives of a ceremony or a figure behind the naming; the name is explained by the shape. The Castilla district grew over land on Madrid’s outskirts, built up in the mid-20th century, when the city stretched its grid of streets northward and kept closing off roundabouts and minor squares like this one. Its origin is plain to see in the curve of the sidewalk.