Madrid San Miguel Market

Madrid San Miguel Market

The history of the Madrid San Miguel Market is rather long and interesting. A lot of our customers at our Madrid tapas tours have done some research about the this breath-taking Madrid San Miguel Market, but they haven’t dug too deep into its history, we are going to give some fun historical facts about this must see Madrid Market.

In Medieval times, the land where the Madrid San Miguel Market is located, was an open air market.  A church was built with the same name and stood for centuries until the early 19^th century where José Bonaparte (Napoleon’s brother and king of Spain), ordered to demolish the church and build a market inspired by the European markets of the times with steel frameworks. It was inaugurated in 1916 and cost the equivalent of 1,800 € today! It is the only market left in Madrid with steel frameworks, because all the others have been destroyed and rebuilt with modern materials such as concrete and brick.

In 1999, the government of Madrid, remodeled the Madrid San Miguel Market alonside European funding, bringing the market back to its original aesthetics at a cost of almost 1 million Euros. However, its commercial started declining due to modern national and multinational supermarkets inside the city center of Madrid.

To avoid further deterioration, a collective of architects, gastronomy experts and members of different social groups set the El Gastrónomico de San Miguel society. They are the current owners of the Madrid San Miguel Market. Their goal is to revive this traditional market similar to Barcelona’s La Boquería Market and we think they have done a great job too! We like to refer to the Madrid San Miguel as the Madrid tapas food court, where you can walk around and order different drinks and Madrid tapas from all the different stands and the owners won’t get annoyed if you ordered a drink or food from one stand and bring it over to their stand. It’s a rather unique Madrid tapas experience.

Join is on our Madrid tapas tours and experience some of the best Spanish tapas in Madrid.