Túnel de Cuatro Caminos
The tunnel takes its name from the Cuatro Caminos roundabout, so called for the crossing of four old roads that left Madrid for the countryside in the nineteenth century.
The tunnel inherits the name of the roundabout it pierces. Cuatro Caminos is so called for the meeting of four roads that in the nineteenth century left Madrid for the countryside: the road to France, today Bravo Murillo; the road of the oil traders, today avenida de Reina Victoria; the paseo de Santa Engracia; and the old ring road, today Raimundo Fernández Villaverde.
In the mid-nineteenth century this was empty land, on the town’s outskirts. At the crossing stood a tollhouse where duty was charged on the goods entering Madrid. From that rural bustle grew a settlement that in 1919 became the head of Madrid’s first Metro line.
The tunnel is much later: it opened in 2005 and replaced a 1969 concrete overpass. Beneath the asphalt, where the four dirt roads once met, the traffic now runs underground.