Salón de Pinos: A Forest on the Roof of a Motorway
Why is it significant?
Walk into the shade of the pines, a long green corridor of trunks and needles running beside the river, with joggers, cyclists and grandparents with pushchairs sharing the path. Now listen carefully.
Key Facts
| Place | Salón de Pinos: A Forest on the Roof of a Motorway |
|---|---|
| Address | Salón de Pinos, Madrid Río, 28011 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.40880, -3.72360 |
| Part of Walk | Madrid Río: Royal Bridges, a Buried Motorway and the Slaughterhouse Turned Arts Factory |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the shade of the pines, a long green corridor of trunks and needles running beside the river, with joggers, cyclists and grandparents with pushchairs sharing the path.
Now listen carefully. Somewhere under your feet, separated from you by a few metres of soil and concrete, thousands of cars are running through the tunnels of the M-30. This whole forest stands on the roof of a motorway.
That is why it looks the way it does. The landscape architects, a team of Spanish studios working with the Dutch firm West 8, could not plant deep-rooted giants over tunnel roofs, so they chose pines and planted them in a continuous ribbon, thousands of them, arranged to feel less like a city park and more like a strip of the Sierra de Guadarrama brought down to the river. This promenade is called the Salón de Pinos, the Hall of Pines, and on a hot afternoon you understand the name.
The project was enormous and controversial. Burying the motorway was one of the most expensive public works in the city's history, it left Madrid with a heavy debt, and for years residents lived beside giant building sites. Critics argued about the cost then, and some still do. But walk here on a Sunday and count the people who now spend their free time beside a river their parents avoided.
The park also stitched together neighbourhoods that the motorway had kept apart for decades. On this west bank are the districts of Latina and Carabanchel, on the other side Centro and Arganzuela, and today many bridges and footbridges join them, old and new, so that crossing the Manzanares, once a matter of dodging traffic, is now a stroll. In 2015 Madrid Río received one of the best-known international prizes for urban design, awarded by Harvard. Keep following the pines south to the next bridge, the Puente de San Isidro.