The viaduct

The bridge that runs high above the Calle de Segovia spans a ravine that has always cut the city in two, because a stream once flowed through a deep gorge down below, and anyone who wanted to get from one part of Madrid to the other had to go all the way down first and then climb back up again.

The first fix came in 1874, an iron viaduct, and in the 1930s it was replaced by the concrete structure you're looking at now, designed by Francisco Javier Ferrero, an architect of the period. That solved the difference in height and gave Madrid a connection it had needed for centuries.

The bridge also earned another reputation, because people jumped from it, enough that songs and novels began to mention it. For decades the city tried to respond with watchmen and with appeals, until transparent screens went up on either side in the 1990s, simply too high to climb over. Since then it has barely happened at all. That a problem people discussed for two generations was finally solved by a piece of engineering is perhaps the most sober lesson of this walk.

We cross the bridge and take the little street up on the right towards the Plaza del Cordón.