Túnel de la Plaza Mayor

Beneath the cobbled floor of the Plaza Mayor runs a road almost no one sees. The tunnel was dug between 1967 and 1969, when the municipal architect Manuel Herrero Palacios rebuilt the square entirely. Whoever crosses it today treads, unaware, over moving cars. The works hid two branches totalling 593 metres that link the calle de Toledo and the calle de Atocha with the calle de San Felipe Neri. Below, one of the city centre’s first underground car parks was opened, and to fit it all in the level of the pavement had to be raised. The most famous obstacle was the equestrian statue of Philip III, which spent 1970 and 1971 in the greenhouse garden of the Retiro before returning to its pedestal. In 2025, a restoration tackled the leaks and cracks right where the two branches meet, that blind spot the tourist above would never imagine.