Cuatro Torres Business Area

Madrid's skyline was resolutely flat for centuries — the Royal Palace dome and the Telefonica Building were about as ambitious as it got. Then, between 2004 and 2009, four skyscrapers erupted from the northern end of the Paseo de la Castellana and changed the city's silhouette overnight. The Cuatro Torres — Four Towers — are the tallest buildings in Spain, and they turned a former sporting complex into a statement of 21st-century ambition.

Torre Cepsa, designed by Norman Foster, reaches 248 meters. Torre de Cristal, by Cesar Pelli, is the tallest at 249 meters — a shimmering glass spire that catches the Madrid sun and throws it back at the city. Torre PwC by Rubio and Alvarez-Sala stands at 236 meters. And Torre Emperador Castellana by Henry N. Cobb reaches 230 meters. Together they form a cluster visible from virtually anywhere in the city, a reminder that Madrid is still building, still growing, still reaching upward.

The four towers were built on the site of the former Real Madrid training ground and sports complex, Ciudad Deportiva, which the club sold in 2001 for roughly 480 million euros — a real estate deal that helped finance the galactico era of Zidane, Beckham, and Ronaldo. So in a very real sense, these skyscrapers were built on football.

The immediate neighborhood is corporate Madrid — glass lobbies, suited professionals, and expense-account restaurants — but the nearby park of the Chamartin area offers views of the towers from below. At sunset, when the glass facades turn gold and orange, the Cuatro Torres look like they belong in Dubai or Singapore rather than in the capital of a country that was still under a dictatorship fifty years ago. That contrast is the whole point.