Madrid is officially declared one of the “greenest” cities in Europe. The name of the city of Madrid comes from the Arabic word “machra”, which means “water source”.
The main football club in Madrid is recognized by FIFA as the most successful in the 20th century. Throughout its history, Real Madrid has won the Champions League 13 times. This football club is undoubtedly the pride of all Real Madrid.
The most famous bullring in Spain is located in the bustling neighborhood of Salamanca. The construction of nearly a hundred years, it consists of a battlefield and numerous spectator zones, which are called “tenidos”.The project of the arena was created by José Espelius, who in his work focused on the style of “Neomudejar” (non-Moorish style).
Santa Cruz Palace
Santa Cruz Palace (Palace of the Holy Cross) – a historic building in the center of Madrid, which is a real gem of the architecture of the Habsburg government in Spain.Earlier in this Palace was a prison, the prisoners of which were quite famous people. Among them – the playwright Lope de Vega, the English writer George Barrow, General Raphael de Riego, who staged a revolt against Ferdinand VII and the famous outlaw Louis Candelas.
In the middle of the XIX century there was a serious fire in the building, as a result of which the palace was almost completely destroyed. And in the early twentieth century, the Spanish government allocated funds for the restoration of several historical monuments, including the Palace of Santa Cruz was restored in its original form.
Prado Museum.
The museum originated from the royal collection, which was later replenished with the descendants of the royal dynasty.The Prado collection contains more than 8 thousand paintings and more than 1000 sculptural compositions. But, despite the opening in 2007 of a new building, the exhibition space holds only a little more than a quarter of the collection.
The Prado presents the gloomy frescoes of the great Goya, painted by him on the walls of his house in Madrid at the time of mental disorders. The most depressive of them is Saturn.