Casa de la Panadería: the Heart of Plaza MayorAudio guide

What you'll discover

In Plaza Mayor stands out a unique building: two slate towers, mythological frescoes on the facade, the only one without red walls. Let me tell you what happened here.

Fifteen hundred ninety. Philip the Second orders an official bakery for the new square: to control the price of wheat, supply the court, avoid hunger.

Diego Sillero builds it here. Bakery below, royal quarters above. Madrid's bread was dispatched from these walls.

Sixteen seventy-two. An August fire devours the building. Tomás Román rebuilds it in seventeen months.

Claudio Coello and Donoso paint baroque frescoes in the royal hall.

Then in seventeen ninety came the third fire. Three-quarters of the square burned. The Bakery House survived intact.

Juan de Villanueva arrives to rebuild — and uses this building as a model. Its height, its proportion, its arcades dictate the new square. What was once a bakery becomes the measure of Madrid.

In nineteen eighty-two a strong storm destroys the original seventeenth-century baroque frescoes. Forty years later, in nineteen eighty-eight, Carlos Franco repaints them from scratch: Cibeles, Bacchus, Cupid, tritons.

They are not a restoration — it's a new canvas on the same wall. Three and a half meters high, six months of brushstrokes.

Inside: baroque vaults on sixteenth-century foundations, the central balcony where kings watched bullfights, the coat of arms of Charles the Second carved in Genoa.

Today civil weddings and tourism occupy the rooms. Listen to the complete guide and I'll tell you about it.

About Casa de la Panadería

During the fifteenth century, there was no building here. Just an open space outside the Christian wall, called Plaza del Arrabal, where Madrid sold its goods. A first porticoed building appeared in that open space to regulate commerce. It was the seed of what would come later. In fifteen ninety, the builder Diego Sillero erected the first Casa de la Panadería here, following the plans of architect Francisco de Mora. But the building you see today was born decades later. Between sixteen seventeen and sixteen nineteen, Juan Gómez de Mora transformed the old Plaza del Arrabal into a rectangular square. Wooden structures, four stories high, clad in red brick. And on the north side: Casa de la Panadería, redesigned by the same Gómez de Mora. The ground floor housed the city's main bakery, which supplied the royal family and the Madrid elite. The upper floors were reserved for the royal family itself. Those two slate towers, the stone arches at the base, and the central coat of arms belong to the Baroque building you still see standing. But it is not the original. August sixteen seventy-two. A fire completely destroyed the Casa de la Panadería. The flames left only rubble. Tomás Román, the architect in charge of the reconstruction, rebuilt it in just seventeen months. A feat of speed and will. Román summoned painters Claudio Coello and José Jiménez Donoso. He commissioned them to decorate the interior and paint the frescoes on the facade. This Baroque ceiling preserves that seventeenth-century decoration: mythological frescoes, gilded moldings, a central coat of arms. The work of Coello and Donoso still breathes here. Seventeen ninety: another fire consumed the square. But this time, Casa de la Panadería survived. Its height and architectural features saved it. Juan de Villanueva, the architect of the Prado Museum, rebuilt the rest of the square using Casa de la Panadería as a model. He reduced the heights to two floors and closed the square with nine arches. These stone arches that illuminate the portico at night are the ones Villanueva designed over two hundred years ago, following the logic of this building. During the nineteenth century, Casa de la Panadería housed the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando and the Royal Academy of History. Culture and memory shared these halls. This ceremonial hall, with its blue carpet embroidered with the coat of arms of Madrid and ancient tiles, is heir to that academic era. Here the city celebrated its knowledge. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Madrid city council took control of the building. It ceased to be a royal bakery, ceased to be an academy. It became a municipal house. In nineteen fourteen, painter Enrique Guijo decorated the facade with new frescoes. But time and weather wore them down quickly. In nineteen eighty-eight, Madrid commissioned painter Carlos Franco to replace the lost frescoes. Franco chose mythological figures linked to the city's identity: Cibeles, Bacchus, Cupid, Proserpina. Franco completed his work in nineteen ninety-two. Those frescoes that cover the facade today are his, not from the seventeenth century. Under these brick arches and granite columns lies the vaulted basement, built on medieval or early modern foundations. Today it is an exhibition gallery. These brick vaults date back to the early centuries of the building. In two thousand seventeen, Ferrovial restored them along with the slate roofs and the pinnacles of the towers. Today, Casa de la Panadería houses the Plaza Mayor Tourism Center and offices of Madrid Destino. It is the venue for civil weddings and city council receptions. Five centuries after the first stone, the building still serves the purpose for which it was born: to serve the city. Only now it no longer bakes bread.

Visiting Casa de la Panadería

How to get there

The closest bus stop is Plaza Mayor, 40 meters away.

Frequently asked questions