Mercado de San Miguel, Madrid: free audio guide, hours, history

The Mercado de San Miguel, or San Miguel Market, is the iron-and-glass market hall next to Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Built under the architect Alfonso Dubé y Díez and opened in 1916, it is the only iron market hall left standing in the city. Today it is a food market with more than 30 stalls, open daily from 10:00 and free to enter. This free audio guide lasts about 4 minutes and starts outside, on Plaza de San Miguel.

What the Mercado de San Miguel audio guide covers

Press play on Plaza de San Miguel, in front of the building, before you go in. Inside it is usually loud and crowded, and most of what the guide talks about is easier to see from outside: the iron frame, the roof, the sign and the columns. There are 5 parts:

Mercado de San Miguel opening hours and entry

The market opens every day at 10:00 and stays open late. There is no ticket and no ticket office: you walk in through any of its doors, wander round the stalls and pay only for what you eat or drink at each one.

To look at the building properly, allow 15 minutes outside and another 15 inside; if you stay for a drink or a few tapas, make it 1 hour. All the stalls are on the ground floor, and the toilets are one floor down, with a lift. The market’s official website also has a virtual tour if you want a look before you go.

Alfonso Dubé’s iron market hall

The building went up between 1913 and 1916 under the direction of the architect Alfonso Dubé y Díez, and it opened in May 1916 as a food market: the place where the neighbourhood bought its everyday fruit, meat and fish. It is a rectangle of cast-iron columns with glass filling the gaps between them, a ceramic-tiled roof and, along the whole edge of the roof, a line of ornate cresting. Stand back on Plaza de San Miguel to take in the whole frame at once: from there you can follow the row of columns along the side of the building, with the cresting running above them.

Madrid had other market halls like this one in those years, such as La Cebada, La Paz and Los Mostenses, but they were later demolished or rebuilt. San Miguel is the only iron market hall that has survived, and in December 2000 it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural, a protected heritage monument, after a process the city council had started in 1982.

Take a close look at the columns, too. On at least one of them, cast into the iron itself, you can read the raised mark of the Madrid firm that made it: «J. Jareño y C.ª Madrid».

What to see inside the market

Inside, the market is a single hall with no dividing walls: the columns carry the iron roof trusses, and the stalls are set along the sides and down the middle, with counters and high tables to eat at.

Today there are more than 30 stalls, fixed counters and carts, with food from different parts of Spain and some international cooking: Iberian ham, cheese, oysters and seafood, rice dishes, croquettes, vermouth, wine and pastries. Stalls change over the years, so the best plan is to walk one full lap first and choose afterwards. The market gets more than 7 million visitors a year.

In the middle of the hall there is a central island where the market has hosted cooking workshops with its stalls; it writes them up on the blog on its website. Look up, too, at the lanterns hanging from the trusses and at the row of windows high on the walls, just under the roof.

This is what a walk through the market looks like:

History: from the church of San Miguel to a gourmet market

The market takes its name from the church of San Miguel de los Octoes, which stood on this site until it was pulled down in 1809. The empty plot became an open-air market, with stalls out in the street, which was how food was sold in Madrid’s squares at the time. The covered iron market came a century later, with Dubé’s building.

After decades of decline, the old food market went through a complete makeover, and on 13 May 2009 it reopened as Madrid’s first gourmet food market: the same ironwork, with tapas bars where the produce stalls used to be. In 2018 it consolidated much of its food offer, with chefs known in Spain and abroad.

Here is the market in 4K, a walk from stall to stall:

How to get to the Mercado de San Miguel and what is nearby

The market is on Plaza de San Miguel, in the old Habsburg quarter of Madrid, the Madrid de los Austrias, right beside Plaza Mayor and a few steps from Calle Mayor. The nearest metro stations are Ópera, on lines 2 and 5 and the Ramal shuttle, and Sol, on lines 1, 2 and 3; Sol is also a stop on the C3 and C4 commuter trains (Cercanías). Buses 3 and N16 stop nearby, and the nearest car park is the Plaza Mayor one. From Puerta del Sol it is about a 5-minute walk.

From Sol, Calle de Alcalá runs east to the Plaza de Cibeles, about 20 minutes on foot from the market, which has its own audio guide:

Free audio guidePlaza de Cibeles, Madrid

Carry on up the same street and you reach the Puerta de Alcalá:

Free audio guidePuerta de Alcalá, Madrid

Every audio guide in the city is on the Madrid page.