PUERTA DE ALCALÀ, History

Hi, I'm Ed, your personal guide. Together with MyWoWo, I'd like to welcome you to one of the wonders of the world.

Today I'll accompany you through the Puerta de Alcalá, which is Madrid's symbol par excellence!

There it stands before you, the Alcalá Gate in the middle of a roundabout in the 19th-century Plaza de la Independencia, among the spectacular exteriors of some expensive restaurants and an entrance to Retiro Park. You should first know that the gate is named after the university town Alcalá de Henares, because the road that leads to it starts from here.

If you know Latin, you'll already have gathered that the the inscription on both of the gate's pediments says that it was built in 1778 by the decree of King Charles III of Bourbon. In this exact location there used to be another gate that had been built at the very end of the 16th century by Philip III to celebrate his wife Margaret of Austria's triumphal entry into Madrid.

The monument is by the Sicilian architect Francesco Sabatini, who designed it in the shape of a triumphal arch inspired by the great Roman Empire models. You've probably already heard the name Sabatini, and you'll hear it mentioned many times again in the discussion of architecture and city-planning in Madrid in the second half of the 1700s....