Exceedingly popular at weekends when it is elbow room only to order at a bar, the two main streets that are home to the majority of the bars and restaurants are Cava Alta and Cava Baja. Serviced by the metro station of the same name, La Latina is synonymous with beers and Tapas in Madrid and is home to multiple bars and restaurants packed into its narrow streets. This is a small triangular Barrio that is sandwiched between Arganzuela to the west and south, Lavapies to the east and Austrias to the north. But for interest and life give me Barrio de Las Lettras and Barrio La Latina any day of the week. It’s an interesting area of Madrid and easy to get to and from using the city’s excellent metro system and I am glad I visited it. So if you are one of these you will fit right in, if not you will probably have an annoying idiot on the table next to you. Yes there are plenty of street bars and cafes, but this is the area where the monied classes of Madrid go to be seen ( and unfortunately heard). It’s very clean and perfectly safe, but compared to other barrios of Madrid, it’s all a bit sterile and lacking in any real culture. Large tree lined leafy boulevards containing several impressive mansions laid out in a grid formation, and is a very pleasant area to stroll around. But it’s saving grace is its architecture and design.
And frankly in that respect it could be in any capital city anywhere in the world. It’s all designer shops, upmarket hotels and expensive restaurants including several Michelin ones. This is the Madrid Barrio for people with money. This street is lined with interesting buildings that are taller than others in the area and whose façades are slanted because they originally served as buttresses and were homes for the town’s knife makers who had their workshops here and would supply knives to the butchers on the Plaza Mayor.
When you do decide to move on I would recommend leaving through the Arco de los Cuchilleros where steps lead down to Calle de los Cuchilleros. I found this main square all a bit too touristy and preferred quite a few of the other squares to this one So you will need to be patient to get your photos of Casa de La Panaderia, of the impressive Arco de Cuchilleros and especially patient for the photo of the Statue of Philip III, dating from 1616, but originally in Casa de Campo Park before it moved here in the mid 1800’s, as this is a magnet for the walking groups who like to stand round it for what seems like an age.
And during the day it’s difficult to see the main attractions here for the huge number of guided walking groups that converge on the square. The main town square of the historic part of old Madrid obviously has to to seen when you are visiting Madrid, but it is nowadays a magnet for tourists and the various hawkers who try to extort money from them for all sorts of tat.
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