In Madrid’s Heart, Park Blooms Where a Freeway Once Blighted [via NY Times]

James Rajotte for The New York Times

The sun sets over the Madrid Río park. More Photos »

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: December 26, 2011MADRID — Even on a chilly Thursday afternoon in December, the old men, engulfed in cigar smoke and reading newspapers, were sitting around chess tables under tall pines. Nearby, a young woman had strung her line between the trunks of two mulberry trees to practice tightrope walking.


Behind her, hypnotized toddlers stared into a small oval fountain full of swirling water, and cyclists pedaled across new bridges with cement roofs that are shaped like upside-down canoes and also across a new steel forked bridge, an elegant nod to industrial-age steelwork, with a great view of the royal palace on its hill.


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