A street behind Plaza Mayor

A doorway's carved date became a restaurant's legend

You're standing on Calle de Cuchilleros, just outside Sobrino de Botín. Guinness lists it as the oldest restaurant in the world, said to date to 1725.

About 200 feet from where you stand, a flamenco venue called Tablao Arco de los Cuchilleros opened in 1961.

Maria of Austria, the Holy Roman Empress, died in 1603 at the Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid. Maria of Austria had retired there in her later years, returning to the city of her birth.

Ferdinand VII of Spain died in 1833 at the Royal Palace of Madrid. Ferdinand VII's death came decades after the 1808 uprising against Napoleon's occupying troops, a revolt that had been fought in his name. By then Cándido Remis had not yet opened his restaurant on Calle de Cuchilleros, which came in 1865.

Nobles and commoners were put to death in the square

Plaza Mayor itself, just past the arch, was Madrid's stage for public killings for nearly two centuries. Nobles convicted of crimes were beheaded there, while commoners were hanged or garroted. The condemned were held in a building next to the square before being brought out.

The square also hosted autos-da-fé, the elaborate public trials and executions run by the Spanish Inquisition. Entire days were given over to the ceremony, and crowds camped out overnight for a place to watch. Under King Philip V alone, 125 of these were staged in Madrid, most of them here.

One execution stood out from the rest. In 1621, a royal official named Rodrigo Calderón was put to death in Plaza Mayor. Rodrigo Calderón had been a favorite of the king's chief minister and fell hard once his patron fell. Rodrigo Calderón's execution became one of the most talked-about in the square's history, remembered partly for the composure he reportedly showed at the end.

A pastry shop's nephew opened his own establishment

The real story of Botín's founding is messier than the plaque suggests. A bakery called Pastelería de Botín had already existed since the late 1700s, run by a man nicknamed Botín, José Puertas Sánchez, in a different square, the Plaza de Herradores. José Puertas Sánchez died in 1847, and the shop passed through his widow and daughter before landing with a relative by marriage.

In 1865, that relative's nephew, Cándido Remis Puertas, broke away and opened his own place on Calle de Cuchilleros, number 17. Cándido Remis Puertas called it "Pastelería Cándido Remis, Sobrino de Botín" — "nephew of Botín." The stone doorway Cándido Remis Puertas installed carries a date, 1725, which only marks when that doorway was carved, not when any restaurant opened behind it. The legend of continuous service since 1725 grew out of that inscription.

Fire tore through Plaza Mayor near the arch

A fire tore through Plaza Mayor in 1790, starting near the arch that opens onto this street, the Arco de Cuchilleros. It nearly destroyed the whole square. The architect Juan de Villanueva rebuilt it afterward, including the arch itself, the one you can walk through right now.

A bandit was said to hide beneath the arch

Guides in Madrid still tell visitors that the bandit Luis Candelas hid in caves beneath this arch to dodge the police. He was eventually caught and executed by garrote, a device that strangles the condemned, in 1837 at Plaza de la Cebada, after being convicted of more than forty robberies. The caves-and-tunnels story is told as local lore, not as settled fact, but Candelas was real, and so was his death.

A friar preached revolt from a stair railing

Under that same arch, sometime around May 2, 1808, a friar named Antonio climbed onto a metal stair railing and used it as a pulpit. He shouted to a crowd below about Napoleon's soldiers occupying Madrid. The uprising that followed became one of Spain's most remembered days of resistance against the French.

A wood-fired oven still roasts the house specialty

Back on Cuchilleros itself, Cándido Remis kept building out his new restaurant. In 1868, he added a wood-fired oven to the kitchen. That same oven, or its direct descendant, still roasts the restaurant's signature dish today: suckling pig, cooked slow and plain the way Castilian kitchens have done it for generations.

Novelists wrote the restaurant into their fiction

Writers kept walking through the door and writing about what they ate. Ernest Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises ends with a meal here, but researchers who have looked closely at the timeline credit the old Herradores location as more likely where Hemingway ate, not this one. Graham Greene mentioned the restaurant in Monsignor Quixote. Novelist Benito Pérez Galdós had already written it into Fortunata y Jacinta decades earlier, describing a character who "dined last night at the Sobrino de Botín pastry shop." A plaque on the building, put up by Madrid's Chamber of Commerce in 1971, marks that literary mention.

A married couple bought the restaurant and kept it

In the 1930s, a married couple, Amparo Martín and Emilio González, bought the restaurant. The González family has run it ever since. They also bought out the old Herradores bakery and its trademark rights, closing that original shop down in the 1960s to end any confusion between the two.

Foreign branches opened and later all closed

The González family tried taking the Botín name abroad, opening branches in Miami in 1998, in Mexico in 2004, and in Puerto Rico in 2007. None of them lasted. The Puerto Rico location, opened with a Ponce couple, drew a crowd of local celebrities and even a former governor to its opening, but it too eventually closed.

The restaurant closed for the first time in 155 years

It was the first closure in its 155 years at this address, breaking a run its own legend had always claimed went back twice that long.

Madrid honoured a myth built on a carved stone

In 2025, the regional government of Madrid awarded Botín the Grand Cross of the Order of the Second of May, timed to the restaurant's claimed 300th anniversary. The honor celebrated a myth built on a carved stone date, but the restaurant it crowned is real enough, still seating up to 200 diners across four floors, still serving roughly 350 to 400 meals a day.

Flamenco venues keep the street loud at night

A short walk past the flamenco theater that opened here in 1961, a second tablao, Tablao Las Carboneras, opened in 2000. Both still host nightly performances, keeping this stretch of streets loud with guitar and heel-taps long after the kitchens close.

Older walls and a fortress stood half a mile away

Muslim Walls of Madrid was built in 855, about half a mile from this point. Royal Alcázar of Madrid was built in 900, about half a mile from this point. Crown of Castile was built in 1230, about half a mile from this point.