Cuesta de Moyano

Thirty wooden stalls stand side by side as the street slopes downward, all the same size and all packed with second-hand books, and they have been here since 1925, the year the booksellers of Madrid, after years of wandering the city with their crates, finally got a permanent spot.

What you see here is the result of a decision a city makes about itself, because a slope between a botanical garden and a station could have become almost anything, and Madrid chose to give the space to people selling used books, and that is how it has stayed for a hundred years.

At the bottom of the slope we cross over and walk up towards the white domed building among the trees.