Puerta del Sol · Plaza Mayor · Plaza de la Villa
The Witnesses of Villa y Corte
You're about to start in the most photographed square in Spain, the one on every postcard, and you're about to discover that almost no one looks closely at what's right in front of them: a second animal on a shield that everyone walks over, a ball that only moves once a year, a bear that doesn't pose the way it does on the city's own street signs. Habsburg Madrid — Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, Plaza de la Villa — keeps its best details at eye level, not behind glass. It's a little over a kilometre and a half in total.
“This is Kilometre Zero: the point from which Spain's radial highways and Madrid's street numbering have historically been measured. At its centre it carries an engraved outline of Spain with the routes radiating outward, and just below that, two coats of arms. One belongs to the Civil Engineers' Association. The other is an old coat of arms of the City of Madrid with a crown, the bear and the strawberry tree... and a second, mythical animal that no longer appears on the current coat of arms. What animal is it?”
This is what the puzzles are like. The rest unlocks once you start playing.
The playing area
- Access to the full trail for 1 year after purchase
- Built-in hint system if you get stuck
- Printable version, in case you’d rather go phone-free
- No signal needed once the trail has loaded