¡Hola a todos!: January 12, 2011 Madrid Antiguo

Still feel sick. And today I had to wake up an hour earlier to attend a special meeting for students living in homestays where they'll be cooking for themselves. (Yesterday was the meeting for homestay students who are provided with breakfast and dinner by their host families.) It wasn't very informative. They warned that because we prepare our own meals and don't necessarily eat with our families, we will probably not get as much interaction with them. That doesn't really seem to apply to my situation, since Señora Alvarez never hesitates to seek me out . We've sort of developed a routine of at least one lengthy, involved conversation again. I am still marveling at how easily I understand her. I'm sure she speaks more slowly than she usually would for me and perhaps even chooses her words more carefully, but talking to her feels almost like conversing in English. Of course, it may just be that she easily does enough talking for the both of us, and I'm never really caught during the times I do start to lose the thread of conversation.

There was another class with Profesora Prieto and another lecture, "The Making of Spain," with Profesor Kavanagh (for which I once again barely kept myself awake despite how interesting it was). Then I had a couple free hours which I should have used to go get food but didn't because I've had no appetite the past couple days. Finally, 5 pm rolled around, and I hopped on the metro to el Sol, the center of Madrid Antiguo, the oldest part of the city. I had completely failed to look up walking directions from there to the meeting point, Plaza Mayor, but there were plenty of signs to guide me because it's such a big tourist area.

As Madrid started to grow into a real city, the Plaza Mayor was created as a place where Madrileños could gather for market, festivals, or as an audience for mayoral - or even royal - proclamations. The statue of the man on horseback is of King Felipe III. He ruled as both the king of Spain and that of Portugal (as Filipe II) during the early 1600s.

I unfortunately got only a picture or two of this man making these huge, beautiful bubbles. The coolest part was when he finished forming them and, just for a moment, they hovered next to him, nothing touching them but thin air. I chose this one to share because the little girl watching it was so cute. :)

This was taken from just outside the plaza, through one of its arched entrances.

Imagine Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia... but much, much smaller and much, much prettier, and with much, much healthier food. You're imagining the Mercado del San Miguel.

And now I will introduce you to another wonder of Spain: olive oil potato chips. They're exactly what you would imagine. Potato chips cooked in nothing but olive oil and some salt. I have yet to try them because I knew it would be super expensive from a place like this, but they're everywhere, freshmade and available in a whole lot of the cafés and bars, including one just outside the Manuel Becerra metro entrance. One of these days I will grab some on the way home.

BREAD! Actually, I've eaten very little bread here. Too busy marvelling at the cost of olive oil and how yummy my stir fries are.

Spaniards love ham. And their ham is supposedly quite good. We forgive them for that because they also love olive oil and garlic. But anyway, you'll see piggy legs hanging up in supermarkets, bars, restuarants, and markets like this one. I'm always a bit weary of the fact that they never seem to be refrigerated. Maybe they've been salted or something?

Side entrance to the Mercado del San Miguel.

This is la Plaza de las Villas, named because it was once the center of the life of old Madrid.

This is the Basílica Pontificia de San Miguel (St. Michael's Basilica). Construction started in 1739 after a fire destroyed the Parroquia (Parish) de San Justo y Pastor, which stood on the same spot. There aren't a whole lot of records remaining, but the parish's charter indicates that it was founded as far back as 1202, making it easily one of the oldest churches in the city at the time of its unfortunate destruction.

Despite its shape, which I think is a bit odd, at least from the outside, the interior of the church is really something to behold. (In case anyone is wondering, a basilica is only different from a regular church in that it either, 1) has been specifically named a basilica by the pope as a formal recognition or reward or 2) is just very, very, very pretty. In this case, it may have been both, but I know the ornateness of its interior alone merits the title.)

Shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War (which ran from 1936 to 1939), the church was sold to the Opus Dei, which still owns and runs it today.

I thought this manger scene was so cool... It tells almost the entire Christmas story and includes even the angel appearing to the shepherds.

The blue dome in the background is part of the Catedral de la Almudena, Madrid's cathedral.

This was my first real view of the cathedral. Until 1561, when the capital was moved here from Toledo, Madrid was nowhere near important enough a city to merit a cathedral. (Cathedrals are different from churches primarily because they are the seat of a diocese, a territory or group of churches under the rule of a bishop. The cathedral acts as as base of operations for the bishop. His throne is located within the cathedral, and he lives close by it. Even once it was the capital, Madrid was still part of the Diocese of Toledo. It wasn't until the pope founded the Diocese of Madrid, composed of a number of the churches originally part of the Dioceses of Toledo, that Madrid could finally have its own cathedral.)

Several years before the creation of the Diocese of Madrid, construction had already started on a massive church located directly across from the Palacio Real de Madrid, the royal palace. It was decided that the building in progress would be the Catedral de la Almudena, Madrid's long-awaited cathedral. Unfortunately, the Spanish-American War in 1898 drained finances to such a degree that progress on its construction slowed dramatically. It dragged on even until 1969, when economic problems again delayed its completion. The cathedral wasn't finished until the early 1990s.

The beginnings of the sunset.

Apparently, Madrid has some very nice sunsets.

This is a view of one of the other entrances of the Catedral de la Almudena, the one closest to the palace. The cathedral is so large that it covers at least an entire block. (I've been informed by Profesora Prieto that Madrid doesn't have blocks, and so the word for blocks, cuadras, shouldn't be used to describe size or distance here, which I think is just silly. I told her that the city's language is really missing something vital. Then again, I think the whole city is really missing something vital by not having any kind of grid system for its streets, but that might just be the New Yorker that's found its way into me even after just one year living there.)

Anyway, this cathedral takes up so much space that it wasn't until later, when I was looking through photos and reading up on my history that I realized that this was also part of the Catedral de la Almudena. This entrance, facing the courtyard of the royal palace, looks quite different from what I had seen of it earlier, and we had taken such a circuitous route to arrive here, stopping to view the sunset - and of course take lots of pictures of the sunset - that it didn't occur to me that it could just be another side of the same building.

THIS is the Palacio Real de Madrid. King Felipe V commissioned its construction as a replacement for the Antiguo Alcázar, or Alcázar de Madrid - meaning simply "Old Castle," or "Castle of Madrid" - which burned down on Christmas Eve of 1734. The Alcázar had been built on a 9th or 10th century Muslim fort, incorporating its foundation and walls into the construction of a castle and then, a few hundred years later, a palace for the royal family. King Felipe probably wasn't so sad to lose the Alcázar. He had married Princess Maria Louisa de Savoy and had some blood right to the Spanish throne, but he had been born in France at the Palace of Versailles and raised as a French Prince. With such an upbringing, he did not at all care for the mixed baroque style of Madrid's old castle, finding it far too medieval for his tastes.

The Palacio Real is also known as the Palacio de Oriente - the Orient Palace or Far East Palace. It was originally designed to be three or four times as large as it is. (You must bear in mind that what you see here in these pictures hardly gives credit to its actual size, since it fails to show how far back the building extends behind this courtyard facade; I might even say, risking correction from Profesora Prieto, that its depth could be measured in an entire cuadra or more.) The original architect in charge of the project, an Italian man named Filippo Juvara, had hoped to build a truly massive palace in the altos (highlands) de San Bernardino, a more open space roughly three kilometers north of where the Alcázar stood. Unfortunately for Juvara and his big dreams, King Felipe was intent that the new palace be constructed in the more limited space that had been occupied by the old palace. This was largely to emphasize the power and legitimacy of the new monarchy; he was the first of the House of Bourbon to rule Spain. The Alcázar had been both a home and a seat of power for the Spanish kings of the House of Austria, and Felipe was only too happy to plan to build a grander palace for himself in its place. The new Palacio Real would both act as a residence for the Royal Family and provide a setting for the king to meet with advisors, handle matters of state, and otherwise fulfill his duties.

Construction started in 1738 and was both extremely slow and extremely costly. Exotic granites and limestone and marble were brought in from all over the world, chosen for their richness but also, more importantly, for their resistance to fire. In every case that it was possible, the use of wood was avoided, and so the floors were instead constructed of brick.

I really, really, really love this picture. I think it might be my favorite of all of these.

We headed out of the space between the courtyard and the cathedral and continued along the outside of the right-hand wall of the palace. Here you can see across the courtyard from one of the side gates.

I think this gives you a better idea of the height of the palace than the other pictures did, although it still doesn't do its depth justice.

When King Felipe IV commissioned this statue of himself, known as the Caballo de Bronce, or Bronze Horse, he was determined that it surpass that of his father, Felipe III, which is now located in the Plaza Mayor. He wanted the front legs of the horse to be off the ground, in mid-motion. This had never before been attempted in Europe, and the Florentine artist, Pedro Tacca, the same man who had sculpted Felipe III's statue, consulted with Galileo Galilei, who advised constructing it in a way that the back half of the statue be made of solid bronze while the front half remain hollow. The drawings on which the sculpture was modeled were made by DiegoVelásquez, one of Spain's most famous artists. Originally, Juan Martínez Montañéz, a very gifted Spanish sculptor, was charged with creating the bust of the statue, using a sketch by Velásquez of the king's face. For this reason, the monument is also known as the Estatua de los Cuatro Genios, the Statue of the Four Geniuses. However, it's really the Estatua de los Tres Genios - Felipe IV hated the bust Juan Martinez Montañéz made and it was not used. Pedro Tacca's son, Ferdinando, made a new bust, one of inferior quality, and that was the one that can be still be seen as part of the statue today.

This is the Puerta del Sol, site of the metro stop most directly central to Madrid Antiguo and much of the rest of the city.

And then, finally, back at home! Made another delicious meal and took a few pictures of the kitchen for you so that you can see where I'm making these super-healthy, super-mouthwatering dishes. ^.^