Puerta del Sol

 
Overview

The Puerta del Sol is a public square in Madrid, one of the best known and busiest places in the city. This is the centre of the radial network of Spanish roads.

Description

The square also contains the famous clock whose bells mark the traditional eating of the Twelve Grapes and the beginning of a new year.  The official centre point of Spain is a gracious, crowded hemisphere of elegant facades. It is, above all, a crossroads: people here are forever heading somewhere else, on foot, by metro (three lines cross here) or by bus (many lines terminate and start nearby). Hard as it is to believe now, in Madrid's earliest days, the Puerta del Sol (Gate of the Sun) was the eastern gate of the city.