The Salón del Prado

In 1570 Philip II had trees planted here, and that is where everything around you begins. Back then this was the eastern edge of the city, a stretch of meadow beside the monastery of the Hieronymite monks, and the name of that meadow, el prado, still lives on in the boulevard and in the museum a little further along.

Two hundred years later it was turned into a salon, because the plan drawn up for Charles III gave this strip the shape of a Roman racecourse, with the three fountains as anchor points and rows of trees along the sides, and the people of Madrid came to stroll here the way you walk from room to room inside a building. They called it the Salón del Prado, and on warm evenings it was packed.

That habit of strolling never really left, because what you hear around you now is a wide traffic artery, and yet people still walk along the central median as if it were a hall.

We follow the median until we reach the fountain with the sea god.