Plaza de la Paja

You are standing on the oldest documented public space in Madrid’s historic core. The Plaza de la Paja occupies what in Islamic and Mozarabic Madrid was the souk of San Andrés, the town’s main market, on the slope running down toward the San Pedro stream, now hidden beneath calle de Segovia. The slope you feel crossing it is the trace of that gully. Almost everything moved through here: livestock, provisions and, above all, the straw and fodder that gave it its name. When the market faded in the 15th century, the palaces arrived. In 1520 the Vargas family paid for the Bishop’s Chapel, Gothic within and Renaissance without, one of the very few buildings of Habsburg Madrid that keeps its original interior. At number 4, between 1876 and 1877, one of the century’s great swindles operated: the savings house of Baldomera Larra, which promised 30% a month and vanished en route to Switzerland. On one side opens the garden of the Prince of Anglona, a small 18th-century garden the city council opened to the public.