Ernest Hemingway's 8 Favourite Madrid Haunts

Officially the world’s oldest restaurant (it was founded in 1725), El Sobrino de Botín was a firm favourite of Don Ernesto, who used to enjoy its speciality, roast suckling pig. Legend has it he would arrive early in the day and write upstairs until his friends showed up for lunch, and was even allowed to make his own martinis. He also used the restaurant as the location for the final scene in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.

It’s no secret that Hemingway was a big bullfighting aficionado. He explored Pamplona’s infamous Running of the Bulls in his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, being a regular visitor there and at Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring. His 1932 book, Death in the Afternoon, explored the culture and traditions of bullfighting. Today, you can still visit Las Ventas, which holds regular bullfights (the best time to see one is during the San Isidro festivities for Madrid’s patron saint in May). If you would prefer not to see a bullfight, you can visit the bullring’s museum and take a tour of the impressive building.

One of Hemingway’s favourite places to stay was the Palace Hotel (now the Westin Palace Hotel), supposedly because of its close proximity to the Prado Museum, where he liked to wander around taking in some of Spain’s finest art. He would often begin his evenings with an aperitif of a martini or two at the hotel bar, which also appears in The Sun Also Rises.

Not a favourite haunt, but certainly a regular one. During the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway would run the gauntlet of sniper fire down Madrid’s Gran Vía to get to the Telefonica Building, home of the Office of Foreign Press and from where he would wire his reports. It was one of the first skyscrapers in Europe and today is the headquarters of the Spanish telecommunications company, Telefonica.

This former slaughterhouse is today a thriving arts and cultural centre, but back when a young Hemingway visited Madrid he liked to hang out at the slaughterhouse in the early mornings. He would watch the apprentice bullfighters practise killing and the old women who would stand in line to drink the blood, which supposedly had nutritious qualities.