PLAZA DE SANTA ANA

Description

Essentials about Plaza de Santa Ana in brief

Located just a short distance from the central Puerta del Sol, Plaza de Santa Ana is the ideal place to start your evening in Madrid. The square is in fact one big street café. Around Plaza de Santa Ana one bar after the other is lined up, on whose terraces you can enjoy a cool beer or a glass of wine with tapas accompaniment. Afterwards, you can move on directly to the surrounding alleys of the nightlife district Huertas.

Eating and drinking on Plaza de Santa Ana

The choice of cafés, bars and restaurants in Plaza de Santa Ana is wide. One place with special attraction for German tourists is the Cervecería Alamana (The German Brewhouse). It was not set up especially for German tourists. No, even Ernest Hemingway liked to sit here with a glass of beer and watch the hustle and bustle in the square.

Culture on Plaza de Santa Ana

Plaza de Santa Ana is not only a good place to eat and drink, it also has a lot to offer in the way of culture. In the square are monuments to two of the greatest literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age: the writer Pedro Calderón de la Barca and the poet Federico García Lorca. The surrounding neighborhood of Huertas is also known as “Barrio de las poetas” (“Neighborhood of the Poets”). The streets around Plaza de Santa Ana were once home to world-famous writers and poets such as Miguel Cervantes and Lope de Vega.

Also, on the east side of the square is the Teatro Español, the oldest theater in the Spanish capital, dating back to the 17th century. On the west side of Plaza de Santa Ana is the beautiful building of the ME Madrid Reina Victoria luxury hotel, where footballers, bullfighters and other Spanish stars and starlets like to come and go.

The history of Plaza de Santa Ana

Historically, Plaza de Santa Ana goes back to the convent of the same name, which was once located on the site. At the beginning of the 19th century, King José I ordered the demolition of the convent and the surrounding houses due to his anti-clerical plans for the renewal of the city. Plaza de Santa Ana got its final appearance in 1880, when the last buildings in front of the Teatro Español were demolished.