At the start of Gran Via road (at its junction with Calle Alcalá), stands the popular Metropolis building. Inaugurated in 1911, it is considered a landmark of Madrid and certainly the most famous feature of Gran Via. It was built for an insurance company and features a french, romanesque style, which was not common at the time. It is topped by a gilded dome featuring the Roman goddess Victoria.

This was one of the first structures to be built on Gran Via and stands just at the start of the street, in front of the Metropolis Building. It was built on a corner plot, highlighting the facade on the outside, in a classical baroque style.

Just next to the Metropolis Building is the Grassy Edifice (Edificio Grassy), a massive structure named after the jewelery shop it used to host on the first floor. It was built in a modernista art déco style with an original column-like cupola at the top. It is one of the most striking buildings of Gran via and it also contains a museum that exhibits rare watches that have belonged to royalties all over Europe.

When you are looking at your list of museums to visit in Madrid, don’t be misled by the Museo Chicote on the Gran Via – it is not a museum, it is the most famous cocktail bar in Madrid.

During the Spanish Civil War the bar was a favorite meeting place for the Foreign Press and Hemingway was one of its most regular patrons. It has kept its nineteen thirties Retro style, but has added modern lighting, modern acoustics, a dance floor and some of the top Spanish DJ’s to entertain you into the small hours.

The walls are festooned with the great and famous who have (perhaps) sipped refreshing cocktails in the heat of the Spanish summer nights. Here you can see – apart from the famous Ernest – photos of Dali, Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra and Orson Welles, among others. If Ava Gardener ever frequented the place, you would have a hard time proving she didn’t – a well positioned photo suggests that she did; but in these days of airbrushing software, who really knows? Only the bar-tenders and they are keeping mum!

The cocktails aren’t very cheap, around 7 Euros a glass, and a lot of people don’t find them up to the high standard the fame of the bar requires they should be, but you should visit the place to form your own opinion.

You should know, however, that at night the cocktail bar is a favorite haunt for gays, the music is very loud and the place is often over-crowded. If you want to have fun, then it’s a great place to spend the evening; if you want a bit of peace and quiet, it would be better if you chose another bar – or spent the evening at your hotel with a good book!

While you are in Madrid, don’t miss a trip to the Edificio Telefonica on the Gran Via, which was once the tallest building in Europe. The building was designed by Ignacio de Cardenas who based his plans on those of the American architect Lewis Weeks. The 90 metre high, 14 storey American-style skyscraper has nevertheless a Spanish Baroque façade of elaborately sculptured ornaments. Since its construction in 1929 it has been a symbol of Madrid and was used during the civil war by the Republican army as a lookout for enemy troop movements and it housed the offices of the foreign press. Ernest Hemingway was one of the foreign journalists at the time and he got the inspiration of his famous book “For whom the bell tolls” here. Unfortunately, its height also made it an ideal target for bombing raids by Franco’s troops. Today the building plays a more peaceful role in Spanish life. The first two floors are shopping malls where you can buy any and every kind of communications equipment. Other floors house the Museum of Telecommunication, the Technology Museum and an auditorium. Two other floors are given over to temporary Spanish art exhibitions. The rest of the building serves as office space.

Although it is neither very large nor very important, you won’t miss the Plaza Callao, which is crossed by the Gran Via, especially if you would like to see a film in Spanish, as there are six cinemas in the square. It also boasts buildings that were once the tallest in Spain. The Palacio de la Pensa was built in 1929 and with its 14 storeys it was the tallest building in Madrid until the Telefonica Building surpassed it. The building houses a café, a concert hall and a cinema, as well as offices, private flats and the Madrid headquarters of the Socialist Party. The Carrion Building was built in 1933 by the architects Eced and Feduchi in an Art Deco style of white marble and granite. It won a second class medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1934. Its cinema is on the ground floor. In 2007 the façade was restored and all the advertising slogans were removed, apart from the one for Schweppes, which is a symbol and has appeared in films and documentaries. The Callao Cinema Building was built in 1927 by Louis Gutierrez Soto. It is a fine example of Spanish Neo-Baroque with a Viennese Art Deco interior. The terrace is used in fine weather for open-air film screenings. The first “talkie” in Spain was shown here in 1929.

The Edificio Carrión, located in Plaza Callao, is the building that hosts the Capitol Cinema. It is a famous landmark of Gran Via and was built between 1931 and 1933 using marble and granite. The building has an art-deco style with several decorations and incorporated technological advances, which was totally new at the time.

One of the most impressive sky scrapers in Madrid is the Edifico Espana on the Plaza Espana. It isn’t the tallest building in the city, but is one of the most striking.

The building is 117 metres high and has 25 storeys; the structure is tiered in four heights and has a Neo-Baroque façade. Its architects Julian and Joaquin Otamendi designed it in the nineteen forties and so it escaped falling into the Cubist Era style which followed shortly afterwards.

When it opened, the edifice was used as a hotel on the first 19 floors, above which offices and private apartments were to be found and there was a swimming pool on the roof terrace. The building was sold for a huge sum in 2004. The buyers have started reconstruction work to transform it into luxury flats, but the work is taking a long time due to the cost involved.

In front of the building, on the square, you can admire the Cervantes Monument. Here the great playwright sits above the bronze figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. On one side of Cervantes is a statue of the peasant woman Aldonza Lorenzo whom Don Quixote thought was his true love; on the other side of Cervantes is the statue of Dulincea del Toboso, Don Quixote’s fantasy love.

Plaza de España is a large square, and popular tourist destination, located in central Madrid, Spain, at the western end of the Gran Vía. It features a monument to Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, and is bordered by two of Madrid's most prominent skyscrapers. Also, the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) is a short walk south from the plaza. In the center of the plaza is a monument to Spanish novelist, poet and playwright Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, designed by architects Rafael Martínez Zapatero and Pedro Muguruza and sculptor Lorenzo Coullaut Valera. Most of the monument was built between 1925 and 1930. The tower portion of the monument includes a stone sculpture of Cervantes, which overlooks bronze sculptures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Next to the tower, there are two stone representations of Don Quixote's "true love", one as the simple peasant woman Aldonza Lorenzo, and one as the beautiful, imaginary Dulcinea del Toboso.