Between these streets lived Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo and Calderón. The Madrid of the Golden Age awaits you.

What is this tour about?

Few European cities experienced theatre with the intensity of Madrid during the Golden Age. In the streets of the Literary Quarter, playwrights, poets, actors and swordsmen lived side by side, transforming the capital of the Spanish Monarchy into one of the great cultural centres of the Baroque era.

This tour brings to life that literary and theatrical Madrid: the Madrid of the corrales de comedias, the rivalries between authors, the convents and the stages that still stand centuries later.

Highlights

• The Literary Quarter: The district owes its name to the great authors of the Golden Age who lived in this area between Paseo del Prado and Plaza de Santa Ana: Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Quevedo and Calderón. Streets that preserve their memory on every corner.
• Theatre: the great spectacle of the Golden Age: We will discover how theatre became the great popular entertainment of seventeenth-century Madrid. We will evoke the vanished corrales de comedias—the Corral de la Cruz, the Corral del Príncipe and the Corral del Limonero—where plays by Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina drew audiences from every social class.
• Teatro Español and Teatro de la Comedia: The Teatro Español, the historical successor to the old Corral del Príncipe, and the Teatro de la Comedia, one of Madrid’s most emblematic theatres. Two institutions that connect today’s theatre with that of the Golden Age.
• Calle Huertas: The backbone of the district, with literary quotations engraved into the pavement. A walk among verses that turns the street into an open book.
• Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians: The remains of Miguel de Cervantes rest here. One of the places with the greatest symbolic significance on the entire route.
• Lope de Vega House: One of the most evocative corners of literary Madrid. The home where the most prolific playwright of the Golden Age wrote much of his work.

What is included?

• Guided tour with official Madrid tourist guides (APIT)

Practical information

Who guides this tour?

This tour is led by APIT professionals (the Professional Association of Tourist Guides of Madrid), official guides specialising in the history, heritage and secrets of the city.