La puerta del SOL

[Fotografias por SOFIE VAN DEN BERGH, KELLY VANDE VELDE, Sol - Plaza Mayor - Mercado de San Miguel.]

The most logic way to start this description is to start with la Puerta del Sol, were all the measurements start from zero. The author of the book ‘A Cultural History of Madrid: Modernism and the urban spectacle’ describes the Puerta del Sol as a place filled with contradictions. It is the gate where the traditional, authentic and modernisation clash. The old and the new come together and need to form a hole. It is not the place where you can come to rest and meditate. It is loud, filled with people, shops, tourists and thieves.[1]

---

[1] PARSONS (L. D.). A Cultural History of Madrid: Modernism and the urban spectacle. Oxford, Berg Publishers, 2003, p. 2.