MADRID RIO

ALONG THE RIVER BANK OF MANZNANRES

Madrid Rio is one of the biggest “green” intervention in a European City in the last few decades! Find here some facts about relationship between the city of Madrid and its small river Manzanares.

Being the most important aquifer of Madrid, the Manzanares River, flows from North to South through a valley in the Western part of the city. In spite of its minor geographical importance, its condition as an all year aquifer was crucial for the decision where to place the Arab fortress, the origin of the city of Madrid.

Nevertheless, the waters of the Manzanares River, almost at a standstill, never were too attractive: Madrid had always turned its back to the river Manzanares. But the worst thing happened in the when in the seventies the M30, a circular highway of 3 to 4 lanes in each direction, was built on both sides of the river, occupying the two riverbanks:

The relationship of the city with the river starts changing, when in 2004 the project Madrid Rio started, a huge intervention to build a new highway underground and a new urban park on its top all along the river Manzanares. In 2011, only 7 years later the park Madrid Rio was opened to the public, changing the physiognomy of the city more than any other public work done in the last decades.

A promenade by Bike leads us from the Wet Park through the new Madrid Rio Park should help to discover this new leisure area already used and enjoyed by thousands of Madrilenian. The bike-tour ends at the Matadero, a new Centre for Artistic Creation built in the former central slaughter house of Madrid: The warehouses transformed in cultural spaces of public use are an interesting exhibition of recent interventions of different young Madrilenian architects.