Free Tour Barrio de las Letras

As it could not be otherwise, we started the tour in the most famous square in Madrid, Puerta del Sol.

There is a lot of history captured in its tiles, statues and balconies that you will love to know.

Next to El Oso y El Madroño we will be waiting for you to start this tour and tell you everything that the square has experienced throughout the history of Madrid.

In Corral de Comedias de la Cruz a large part of the Spanish Theater of the Golden Age was premiered.

It was a theater with a baroque essence, where authors, comedians, musketeers elaborated all kinds of entanglements in the most literary neighborhood of the city.

He was born in 1579 “in an elongated lot within a neighborhood courtyard” according to the deeds of purchase, which bordered the oven of Antonio Ventero, that of Antonio González el Labrador and in front with the street of the Cross and “consisted of courtyard, lodging, steps, rooms, grilles, casserole and gathering place”.

Better known as the Callejón del Gato, this small street, totally pedestrian, begins at Calle de la Cruz and ends at Núñez de Arce.

In this street we find the distorting mirrors in which Valle-Inclán was inspired to explain his esperpentos through Max Estrella, the protagonist of Luces de Bohemia.

The mirrors still remain on the street, on the facade of the Las Bravas bar, where the originals are preserved.

Callejón del Gato is one of the best known places in Madrid, and ‘gatos’ is the nickname given to people born in Madrid.

Since the sixteenth century and especially in the seventeenth century, some of the best writers and playwrights lived in this square and its surroundings. This is the case of Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega or Cervantes, as well as painters, actors and a great variety of artists who lived in the city.

Here were the first comedy corrals that are remembered in Madrid, the Pacheca and Príncipe.

We will contemplate the Parish of San Sebastian and its gardens, where Lope de Vega was buried.

It was the parish of comedians and politicians. Ramón de la Cruz, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, José Echegaray and Jacinto Benavente were baptized in this church.

In addition to Lope de Vega, the remains of Juan Ruiz Alarcón, José de Espronceda and the architect Ventura Rodríguez rest here.

Gustavo Adolfo Béquer and Mariano José de Larra married their wives in this historic and literary parish.

As we walk down Huertas Street we can read verses of the main authors of the Golden Age: Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Tirso de Molina, Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Francisco de Quevedo, inscribed in gold on the cobblestones of the street.

Surrounded by museums, it is one of the Madrid streets with more day and night life, and full of buildings and corners with great artistic and cultural value, symbol of the artistic life that ran through these streets.