The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid

This 2003 book examines the transformation of Madrid from a secondary market town to the capital of the worldwide, Spanish Habsburg empire.

Jesús Escobar (Author)

9780521111539, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 7 May 2009

376 pages, 124 b/w illus.
24.4 x 17 x 2 cm, 0.6 kg

'… the first to offer a detailed and fully contextualized account of the square's construction. … Solid and well documented throughout, this elegant volume also brings much-needed attention to what was - and remains - one of Europe's premier urban spaces.' Journal of Urban History

The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid examines the transformation of Madrid from a secondary market town to the capital of the worldwide, Spanish Habsburg empire. Focusing on the planning and building of Madrid's principal public monument, the Plaza Mayor, it is based on analysis of archival documents, architectural drawings, as well as the surviving built fabric of the city itself. In this 2003 book, Jesús Escobar demonstrates how the shaping of the city square and its environs reflects the bureaucratic nature of government in Madrid chosen in 1561 to serve as a capital of Spain. He also examines the careful planning of the city, with particular regard to how the necessities of housing and public works that accompanied its new capital status were accommodated. The process reveals the sophistication of town planning in late sixteenth-century Spain and forces a reconsideration of Spanish urbanism within the contexts of contemporary European and Spanish colonial developments.

1. Madrid, town and court
2. Architecture and bureaucracy
3. Sixteenth-century initiatives
4. The panadería and its impact
5. Seventeenth-century reforms
6. The plaza mayor as political symbol.

Subject Areas: Architectural structure & design [AMC], Theory of architecture [AMA]