At Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, a small marker identifies kilometre zero while streets radiate from the semicircular plaza. A clock above the former Casa de Correos anchors another national ritual, making this busy junction both a practical reference point and a civic gathering place.
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A small plaque in the paving marks kilometre zero, the reference point for Spain’s radial roads.
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UpgradeQuick facts
- The kilometre-zero plaque marks the reference point for Spain’s radial roads.
- The clock is on the former Casa de Correos.
- The New Year tradition pairs twelve grapes with twelve clock chimes.
More places in Madrid
Almudena Cathedral
Almudena Cathedral took more than a century to complete, changing from a neo-Gothic proposal to a more classical exterior beside the Royal Palace. Its long construction reflects Madrid’s delayed status as a diocese and the political and financial interruptions of modern Spanish history.
Atocha Station Tropical Garden
A tropical garden fills Atocha’s former passenger hall, bringing humid greenery and water into a major rail station. Its location is the surprise: a nineteenth-century transport space became an indoor landscape when the station was expanded for a new era of long-distance rail.
CaixaForum Madrid
CaixaForum Madrid turns a former power station into a cultural center whose most striking feature is its apparent suspension above the street. Brickwork, a lifted base, and a living wall make the building itself an exhibit in urban reuse.
Campo del Moro Gardens
Campo del Moro’s broad landscape garden rises toward the Royal Palace, offering a softer counterpart to the geometric Sabatini Gardens. Its name recalls a medieval encampment tradition, while the garden visitors see was shaped centuries later under nineteenth-century royal patronage.
Casa de Campo
Casa de Campo began as royal hunting land and is now a vast public park on Madrid’s western edge. Its transition from Crown property to city land in 1931 transformed an exclusive landscape into shared space, while walls and bridges preserve earlier traces.
Casa de Campo Cable Car
The Casa de Campo cable car was designed to turn a long urban crossing into a brief aerial passage between Madrid and its great park. Since its 1969 inauguration, the ride has offered a changing view of the city’s western landscape and the Casa de Campo beyond.