El Madrid de los Austrias

The Habsburgs commissioned a variety of buildings and infrastructure projects, in order to represent their power and wealth through their shaping of public space.

The most notable Habsburg construction and the essential part of El Madrid de los Austrias is the Plaza Mayor, in the middle of which stands a statue of its builder, Philip III of Spain.

At the end of the reign of Philip II, the town occupied 282 hectares and had about 7590 homes, three times more than in 1563 (2,250), shortly after the appointment of Madrid as capital.

This induced the king to issue the edict known as Regalía de Aposento, through which property owners of more than one floor were forced to give one to a family of the court.

The structure has two prominent corner towers with pointed roofs, and originally accommodated a prison, the Cárcel de la Corte.

It was built by the architect Juan Gómez de Mora, designer of the Plaza Mayor, and it is architecturally similar with a relatively austere red-orange façade and mansard roof, and steep-roofed corner towers.