The Night of the Executions

On the Montaña del Príncipe Pío, a hill just over a kilometre west of where you're standing, the volleys that half of Madrid heard rang out in the early hours of 3 May. Twenty-four people were shot there, and another twelve elsewhere in the city, condemned by the commission of Grouchy, the French general in charge, often on nothing more than being caught carrying a knife.

Goya turned it into the painting that has shaped how the world imagines that night ever since. In The Third of May 1808, a man in a white shirt kneels with his arms thrown wide before a row of faceless soldiers, lit by a lantern set on the ground. The canvas hangs in the Prado beside the one of the Puerta del Sol, where this walk began, and together they form a question and its answer.

The hill is still there, close to the Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, the chapel where Goya himself lies buried.

We follow the Calle de San Bernardo almost to the Gran Vía, then turn left into the Calle de Silva.