Plaza de la Villa

The square sits on the heart of two overlapping Madrids, the Islamic and the medieval Christian, between the Puerta de Guadalajara and the Puerta de la Vega. From the 13th century it gathered the town’s civic life: the market, the council and the parish of San Salvador, whose porch sheltered the first municipal sessions. When that church decayed, the council sought its own seat. Philip IV granted permission in 1629 to build the Casa de la Villa, designed by Juan Gómez de Mora; the first plenary session in the finished building was held in 1693. On the eastern flank stands the House and Tower of the Lujanes, a 15th-century Gothic-Mudéjar complex that is Madrid’s oldest civil building. To the south, the Plateresque Casa de Cisneros of 1537 is joined to the Casa de la Villa by a raised passageway over calle del Codo. In 1891 the monument to Álvaro de Bazán by Mariano Benlliure was unveiled, with verses by Lope de Vega on its pedestal. The council left its seat here in 2007 when it moved to the Palacio de Cibeles.