Eight routes to rediscover Madrid
We suggest eight itineraries to discover the cultural richness of the capital, focusing on some of the city's most emblematic places and characters.
You can follow the eight "Strolling" itineraries whenever you want. All you have to do is scan this QR code or visit this website.
Description
The "Strolling" project ("Los Paseantes") invites you to explore and get to know the city of Madrid through a series of cultural walks that you can enjoy either physically (individually) or digitally. The itineraries will help you to discover nooks and crannies of the capital related to disciplines such as art, literature, music or image.
Each itinerary is designed as a chapter and can be accessed by scanning the QR code on this page or by clicking on this link to view it on your computer.
The first chapter, "A Book of Love", makes its way from its starting point, the Cuesta de Moyano, to the Retiro Park to explore the Madrid Book Fair and discover the origins of the People's Libraries, two of which still survive today, one near the old zoo and the other next to the statue of Benito Pérez Galdós.
The second chapter is called "Forbidden Love". Written by Arte Compacto, the creators of the popular art podcast, it tells the story of the two lions that pull the chariot of the goddess Cybele and explores other interpretations of the myth surrounding the goddess, as they accompany us on this tour of the most festive, demonstrative, secret and passionate side of the Paseo del Prado.
In the third chapter, "Botanical Passion", the gardener and art lover Eduardo Barba invites us to take a stroll through some of the greenest and most flowery corners of the city where he will share his particular vision of nature and the place that we humans and love occupy in it. Chapter four, "Words of Love", proposes a route through a series of epistolary love affairs, that most intimate of literary genres, alive with secret conversations and words of seduction.
"Spaces of Love" is the title of the fifth chapter, a very special itinerary in which the architecture and urban planning of the city cease to be a mere backdrop and instead take centre stage in our love stories. From there we move on to the seventh chapter, " Songs in Flames", in which we pick up the musical thread that once ran through the Paseo del Prado, as the musical group Niña Vintage takes us on a tour of the most musical and jazzy side of Madrid.
In the final chapter, "Love Hotel", Sonia Taravilla, a professional in the cultural sector who has been running the successful social blog "El Sereno de Madrid" for more than a decade, has prepared an itinerary through the city’s best hotels in search of the secret love affairs that went on behind their closed doors, witnesses to the great passions that have remained hidden since the 19th century.
Scan the QR code with your mobile phone and off you go!
Cast & Creative
"Strolling" (Los Paseantes) is a project that seeks, on the one hand, to use fun and curiosity to make people aware of the enormous cultural wealth of our city and, on the other hand, to use new technologies and social networks to disseminate it.
The project has been curated by Querido Museo, specialists in the design and development of projects that explore new forms of dialogue and interaction between visitors and the city's cultural heritage.
With the collaboration of:
Gsus (Jesús Fernández): Art design and direction + audiovisual production.
Kites: Software
Acknowledgements:
Royal Botanical Gardens CSIC, CentroCentro, Royal Observatory of Madrid, “Memory of Madrid” Digital Project, Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute MCDE, Soy de la Cuesta Association, Fernando Vicente (illustrator), Arte Compacto, Eduardo Barba, Marta Sanz, León Siminiani, El Gesto (cinematography), the Langarita-Navarro Studio, Belén Coca and Lorenzo Puy (Niña Vintage) and Sonia Taravilla (El Sereno de Madrid).