Ronda de Segovia

The Ronda de Segovia closes off the Palacio district to the southwest, curving down a little under a kilometer along the Vistillas hill toward the Manzanares floodplain. Before it was a street it was a path: a service track running outside the Cerca de Felipe IV, the wall used to tax whoever entered the town. The 1868 revolution did away with that wall and the ring path became a promenade, though the sloping ground delayed for years its filling with houses. The name refers to the portillo de Segovia, one of the wall’s minor openings, beside the access toward the road that led to Segovia across the Manzanares. At number 91 survives a stretch of the wall itself: some seven meters in an L, in the Toledo-style bond, with a pointed-arch niche —⁠one of the most complete fragments still standing. Beside it, Fire Station no. 3 has been in service since 1907.