Puerta del Sol

This mobile audio guide starts here at Puerta del Sol. The map in the app helps with navigation, and the audio starts automatically when GPS shows that you have reached each stop. It is also an easy place to begin because Sol station sits directly under the square, with Metro lines 1, 2 and 3 and Cercanías lines C-3 and C-4. From here, Madrid begins to make sense very quickly. Look at the open space around you. Puerta del Sol is one of Madrid's best known squares and one of its main hubs, where several important streets meet. Its shape and position make it feel like a natural center of the city. This place began as the site of one of Madrid's gates, and the square gained much of its importance with the construction of the Casa de Correos in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, it was reshaped into much of the form you see today. Now turn to the Casa de Correos, the long red and white building with the clock tower. It was built between 1760 and 1768 by the French architect Jacques Marquet as the main post office. Today it is the seat of the regional government of Madrid. The clock above it is famous across Spain because, on New Year's Eve, people follow its twelve midnight chimes while eating twelve lucky grapes. Near the main entrance, look down for Kilometre Zero. That small marker is the point from which Spain's major radial roads are measured. Across the square stands the Bear and the Strawberry Tree, the symbol of Madrid and one of the city's classic meeting points. Near the center, the equestrian statue of Charles III recalls the king remembered for reforms that helped modernize Madrid. Puerta del Sol has also seen some of Spain's most charged moments. It witnessed the Esquilache Mutiny in 1766, resistance against Napoleon's troops on 2 May 1808, and, much later, the 2011 protest camp of the 15-M movement, which turned Sol into a national symbol of public debate and civic protest.