Mercado de San Fernando

The market hall on Calle de Embajadores has stood here since 1944, designed by Casto Fernández-Shaw on land that until shortly before had belonged to the monastery of the Escuelas Pías, a religious teaching order whose building had burned down during the Spanish Civil War, after which the site was filled in piece by piece.

It's one of the five municipal markets in the centre, and like so many of these halls it emptied out in the nineties when the supermarket won. What followed was a second life, because alongside the vegetable stalls and the butchers came bars, small kitchens and stands selling things that have little to do with food, and the crowd that came for those kept the rest afloat.

The hall is open on weekdays from nine in the morning until ten at night, with a break in the afternoon on Mondays and shorter hours on Sundays. Walk inside and you see at a glance who lives in this neighbourhood.

Calle de Embajadores takes us a short way north, where Calle de Tribulete begins on the left and leads to a square with the remains of a church.