AZCA and the Cuatro Torres: Madrid goes vertical
The Bernabéu, the AZCA towers, and the four skyscrapers that gave Madrid a skyline at last. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Santiago Bernabéu
The home of Real Madrid, lately re-skinned in a curving steel-and-glass shell that wraps the old bowl. You don't need a ticket to feel the scale — walk the *Castellana* side and look up at the new cladding. The stadium is the gateway to the towers; everything north of here is taller.

2. Torre Picasso
The tallest thing in AZCA when it went up in 1988, designed by Minoru Yamasaki — the same architect as the original World Trade Center. A plain white slab that once dominated Madrid and now looks almost modest. Stand at its foot on the plaza and notice how the 1980s imagined the future.

3. Plaza de Picasso and the AZCA slab
The raised pedestrian deck at the centre of AZCA, all 1970s concrete levels, ramps and a sunken plaza. It has aged into something between brutalist monument and skateboard park. Walk through rather than around — this is Madrid's one real attempt at a multi-level downtown.

4. Nuevos Ministerios
Secundino Zuazo's long government complex from the 1930s, a sober brick wall of ministries with an arcaded courtyard you can walk straight through. The contrast with the glass towers behind is the whole story of the avenue: two centuries of ambition, two hundred metres apart.

5. Cuatro Torres Business Area
Four skyscrapers on the old training ground of Real Madrid, the tallest in Spain — Cepsa, Cristal, PwC and Espacio, with a fifth (Caleido) added later. Best seen from the green strip below; they read as a single composition, four exclamation marks closing the *Castellana* to the north.

6. Caleido and the northern edge
The newest tower, the one with the horizontal 'crossbar' base, marks where the avenue finally runs out of city. End here and look back south down the whole axis you've walked. Begoña metro is a few minutes east when the light goes.

AZCA and the Cuatro Torres: Madrid goes vertical