Ronda de Toledo

The Ronda de Toledo traces the southern arc of Madrid’s four historic rondas, alongside the Ronda de Atocha, the Ronda de Valencia and the Ronda de Segovia. All follow the line of a wall that no longer stands: the Cerca de Felipe IV, raised in 1625, thirteen kilometres of brick and packed earth that did not defend the town but taxed the goods entering it. Whoever walks the ronda today treads where that wall once ran. The wall came down in 1868 and the Puerta de Toledo was left as an arch that led nowhere. Number 2 holds the street’s industrial past: here the gasworks burned coal that by 1876 fed 4,250 street lamps, and a brick chimney survives from it in today’s Parque del Gasómetro. Further on, on the site of the old slaughterhouse, rose the Central Fish Market, now classrooms of the Carlos III University. The ronda is still a border: it closes off the Rastro flea market to the south and separates Centro from Arganzuela, just as it once separated the inside from the outside of the walled town.