Stranded like a noetic and resplendent ark towards the end of the artistic Paseo del Prado and its confluence with the very popular Calle de Alcalá, its pale appearance, like those enigmatic white hands that so fascinated Bécquer, contrasts with the skies of a city, Madrid, always open to the tortuous storms of romanticism.

It is quite possible that in the minds of the architects who designed it -Antonio Palacios and Joaquín Otamendi- the desires of exorcism survived to counteract the supposed bewitches that characterize that other palace that faces it, that of Linares, for whose rooms the Evil tongues that persists in appearing the ghost of his young and dead young marquise.

Inaugurated in March 1919, a few months after the end of that bloody world carnage that reduced much of the barbarous West to ashes, for many years it housed the central offices of the Post and Telecommunications, being the metaphorical matron of those instruments of poetic nostalgia, which were written letters.

Since the end of 2007 and after some pharaonic works, which by the grace of fate did not affect its delicate and neo-Plateresque exterior façade, it began to house the premises of the current City Hall, also maintaining a wide range of activities ludic-cultural, which is worth knowing.

Together with the marvelous statue dedicated to the figure of Cibeles de Ctesinonte, based on the supposed work of the sculptor Fidias, it is part of the meeting places in Madrid, and is also one of its determining symbols.

I simply wanted to present it to you under a personal vision, which I hope will be to your liking.

NOTICE: Both the text and the accompanying photographs are my exclusive intellectual property and therefore are subject to my Copyright.