Plaza de Castilla
A name given in the early 1950s to the great roundabout at Madrid’s northern gate, honoring the historic region of Castile, toward whose roads it looked out.
Castile, the historic region that gave its name to the Crown and to the kingdom of the peninsula’s heartland, named this esplanade when it was built up in the early 1950s. It is Madrid’s northern gate, the point where the paseo de la Castellana opens toward the roads to Burgos and Colmenar. Whoever left the city here set off for Old Castile.
Before it was a square it was a crossroads and open ground. Where the carretera de Francia met the camino de Chamartín stood the Hotel del Negro, a stop for travelers and carters who had a drink before entering Madrid. The old house was torn down when the Castellana was extended this far.
What the traveler sees today came later: the Canal de Isabel II reservoir, the two leaning towers of the Puerta de Europa, and Calatrava’s metal obelisk, planted in the middle of the traffic.