Plaza de Colón & Jardines del Descubrimiento
Why is it significant?
Let the traffic roar past for a moment and find the slender stone column in the middle of the square, with a small white figure of Christopher Columbus on top, one hand raised towards the west.
Key Facts
| Place | Plaza de Colón & Jardines del Descubrimiento |
|---|---|
| Address | Plaza de Colón, 28001 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42510, -3.69000 |
| Part of Walk | The Marquis Who Built a City: Madrid's Salamanca District & the Castellana |
| Generated | Generated |
Let the traffic roar past for a moment and find the slender stone column in the middle of the square, with a small white figure of Christopher Columbus on top, one hand raised towards the west. Behind him flaps one of the largest Spanish flags in the country, and beyond that rises a pair of strange office towers.
The column went up in 1885, a lacy neo-Gothic needle designed by Arturo Mélida, with the statue carved by Jerónimo Suñol. Around its base, reliefs tell the voyage of 1492 like a stone comic strip: the ships, the landing, the queen who paid for it. The flag above you is much newer, first raised in 2001, and on a windy day you can hear it crack like a sail.
Now look at the massive rough blocks of concrete on the garden side, the Jardines del Descubrimiento. They are a monument from 1977 by the artist Joaquín Vaquero Turcios, carved with maps, prophecies and the words of chroniclers. Under your feet, behind the curtain of the old waterfall, lies a whole theatre and cultural centre, built into the hollow beneath the square.
And those two towers? The Torres de Colón, finished in 1976 by the architect Antonio Lamela, were built upside down. First came the concrete cores, then the floors were hung from the top and added downwards, like a stack of trays suspended from a hook. In the 1990s someone added a green crown with a little spike on top, and Madrid immediately nicknamed it the plug... el enchufe.
It is fitting that this square is a hinge. To the south lies old Madrid; to the north, the long Castellana; and to the east, the grid the Marquis of Salamanca bet his fortune on. Turn towards the huge classical palace on the eastern side and walk round to Calle de Serrano, where a stone staircase leads up to a Spanish queen from two and a half thousand years ago.