Ermita de la Virgen del Puerto: A Baroque Chapel for a Port Without a Sea

Why is it significant?

Start beside the small brick chapel with the pointed slate spire, a very Madrid kind of tower that looks a little like a witch's hat, standing among the trees of the riverside promenade, with the green wall of the Casa de Campo rising beyond the water.

Key Facts

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Start beside the small brick chapel with the pointed slate spire, a very Madrid kind of tower that looks a little like a witch's hat, standing among the trees of the riverside promenade, with the green wall of the Casa de Campo rising beyond the water. This is the Ermita de la Virgen del Puerto, built in 1718 by Pedro de Ribera, the most theatrical of Madrid's baroque architects. It was commissioned by the city's corregidor, the Marqués de Vadillo, who brought with him the devotion to the Virgin of the Port, patroness of Plasencia in Extremadura. And no, there is no harbour here. The puerto in her name is a mountain pass, which suits a city that is about as far from the sea as a Spanish capital can be. Vadillo was a man with a plan for this neglected riverbank. Around his chapel he laid out a promenade with gardens, and he hired the same Ribera to build a grand new bridge a little further downstream. For centuries this was where Madrid came down to the river: washerwomen kneeling at the water with their bundles, families picnicking on feast days, carriages rolling along the paseo on summer evenings in search of something resembling a breeze. The chapel has had a hard life. In the Civil War the front line ran along this very river, and the ermita was badly damaged and had to be restored afterwards. Then, from the 1970s, the M-30 ring road was squeezed along the banks, and the little chapel spent decades listening to the roar of traffic. Those lanes are still here, by the way... they are just underneath you now, in tunnels. What you are walking on is a park laid over a motorway, and that is the story of this whole walk: a river that Madrid mocked, ignored and buried, and finally rediscovered. Follow the promenade south for a couple of minutes to the great granite bridge of nine arches.