The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid examines the transformation of Madrid from a secondary market town to the capital of the worldwide, Spanish Habsburg empire. Focusing on the planning and building of Madrid's principal public monument, the Plaza Mayor, it is based on analysis of archival documents, architectural drawings, as well as the surviving built fabric of the city itself. In this 2003 book, Jesus Escobar demonstrates how the shaping of the city square and its environs reflects the bureaucratic nature of government in Madrid chosen in 1561 to serve as a capital of Spain. He also examines the careful planning of the city, with particular regard to how the necessities of housing and public works that accompanied its new capital status were accommodated. The process reveals the sophistication of town planning in late sixteenth-century Spain and forces a reconsideration of Spanish urbanism within the contexts of contemporary European and Spanish colonial developments.

Jesús Escobar's examination of the transformation of Madrid (from a secondary market town to the capital of the worldwide Spanish Hapsburg empire) focuses on the planning and building of Madrid's principal public monument, the Plaza Mayor. It is based on the analysis of archival documents and architectural drawings, as well as the surviving fabric of the city itself. Escobar demonstrates how the development of the city square and its surroundings reflects the bureaucratic nature of the government that chose Madrid in 1561 to serve as the capital of Spain.

With its selection as the court of the Spanish Habsburgs, Madrid became the de facto capital of a global empire, a place from which momentous decisions were made whose implications were felt in all corners of a vast domain. By the seventeenth century, however, political theory produced in the Monarquia Hispanica dealt primarily with the concept of decline. In this book, Jesus Escobar argues that the buildings of Madrid tell a different story about the final years of the Habsburg dynasty. Madrid took on a grander public face over the course of the seventeenth century, creating a "court space" for residents and visitors alike. Drawing from the representation of the city's architecture in prints, books, and paintings, as well as re-created plans standing in for lost documents, Escobar demonstrates how, through shared forms and building materials, the architecture of Madrid embodied the monarchy and promoted its chief political ideals of justice and good government. Habsburg Madrid explores palaces, public plazas, a town hall, a courthouse, and a prison, narrating the lived experience of architecture in a city where a wide roster of protagonists, from architects and builders to royal patrons, court bureaucrats, and private citizens, helped shape a modern capital. Richly illustrated, highly original, and written by a leading scholar in the field, this volume disrupts the traditional narrative about seventeenth-century Spanish decadencia. It will be welcomed by specialists in Habsburg Spain and by historians of art, architecture, culture, economics, and politics.

Profusely illustrated, this historical work focuses on the planning and construction of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain, during the second half of the 16th century--when Madrid went from being a mercantile town to the capital of the Hapsburg Empire. Including a detailed analysis of archived documents, architectural plans, and drawings, this study chronicles this monument's architectural and urban development, explains the symbolism associated with it, and reveals how it came to be a model for other European constructions. "Profusamente ilustrada, esta obra historica enfoca el planeamiento y construccion de la Plaza Mayor en Madrid, Espana, durante la segunda parte del siglo 16--cuando Madrid paso de ser un pueblo mercantil a capital del imperio de los Habsburgo. Incluyendo un analisis detallado de documentos archivisticos, planos arquitectonicos y dibujos, este estudio relata los progresos arquitectonicos y urbanos del monumento, explica el simbolismo asociado con ello, y revela como llego a ser un modelo para otras construcciones europeas."