EUROPE FOR FREE : CITY: SECTION :

churches

For the capital city of a country that is been seriously, historically violently, Catholic, Madrid has a simply astounding total lack of interesting churches. Even the Cathedral is a lame modern construction not started until 1880, largely designed in a neo-Necolassical style in the 1940s, and not opened until 1993!

The only halfway interesting church is the massive 1780s San Fancisco el Grande, a Franciscan monastery-with-church that sports an enormous dome (so unwieldy huge they've been repairing it ever since it was finished) and an early Goya, but doesn't belong on these pages because it charges admission (albeit a pittance).