Plaza de Santo Domingo

This article is about a square in Spain. For the one in Mexico, see Santo Domingo (Mexico City).

The plaza de Santo Domingo is a public square in the city of Madrid, Spain.

Plaza de Santo Domingo

Type	plaza
Maintained by	Ayuntamiento of Madrid
Location	Centro, Madrid, Spain
Coordinates	40°25′12″N 3°42′30″W / 40.420049°N 3.708422°W / 40.420049; -3.708422
Major junctions	Calle de San Bernardo, Calle de Preciados

History and description

The square covers an area of 8,488 m² (2.097 acres).^[1] It is located in the Palacio neighborhood, itself belonging to the Centro District.

 

The square by the 17th century

Located in the northern end of the city by the 16th century, near the Walls of Philip II, the square became a key point for the traffic arriving to Madrid from El Pardo or from Fuencarral.^[2] The huge convent of Santo Domingo covered an area going along the cuesta de Santo Domingo, extending from the plaza de Santo Domingo to the plaza de Isabel II.^[3] The square gained its current size after the demolition of the convent during the 19th-century ecclesiastical confiscations.^[4]

In 1959, during the Francoist dictatorship, a 3-storey parking lot (the first multi-storey parking lot built in Spain) was built in the square.^[5][6] As the urban space degraded with the preponderance given to car, the part of the parking lot above ground was ultimately demolished in 2006. The new square, with a gardened area designed by Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada installed on the surface, was inaugurated in April 2007.^[7]

References

Citations

1. Llés Lazo & Higueras García 2016, p. 121.
2. Amo Horga 2003, p. 20; 64.
3. Moreno Ballesteros 2015, pp. 48–49.
4. Llés Lazo & Higueras García 2016, p. 10.
5. Gutiérrez, Vera (11 April 2006). "Concluye la demolición del aparcamiento de Santo Domingo, que será una plaza en 2007". El País.
6. Llés Lazo & Higueras García 2016, p. 27.
7. "La plaza de Santo Domingo deja de ser sólo un aparcamiento". El Mundo. 27 April 2007.

Bibliography

• Amo Horga, Luis María del (2003). Cercas, puertas y portillos de Madrid, (S.XVI-XIX) (PDF). Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid. ISBN 978-84-669-2990-5.
• Llés Lazo, Carlos; Higueras García, Ester (2016). Paisaje urbano, necesidades y funcionalidad del Sistema de Plazas del entorno de Sol de Madrid (PDF). Instituto Juan de Herrera; UPM.
• Moreno Ballesteros, Vicente (2015). La desamortización de Madoz en Madrid capital (1855-1894) (PDF). Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.