Plaza Matadero

The esplanade takes its name from the compound that embraces it: the old Municipal Slaughterhouse, raised on the Arganzuela meadow when there was nothing here but pasture and the bank of the Manzanares. By the late nineteenth century, the old slaughterhouse at the Puerta de Toledo had grown small and unsanitary, and the city council commissioned the architect Luis Bellido to build a new complex. The works dragged on until 1924, and the result was a small city of neo-Mudéjar brick: nearly fifty buildings with pens, cold stores and even a sanitary laboratory, presided over by the Casa del Reloj. The slaughterhouse worked until 1996. A decade later, the halls began a second life as a cultural centre, with cinema, theatre and design, and since 2024 they host Spain’s first public space devoted to dance. Today this large open square is the heart of the site: the point the pavilions face, where in summer concerts play where herds once lowed.