Chinchon

Chinchon's Plaza Mayor took its present form by the seventeenth century: an irregular circle enclosed by three-storey houses with continuous wooden galleries, around 230 balconies in all, painted green, on a sloping cobbled floor. It has never been purely decorative, serving as a market, a theatre, an execution ground and, several times a year, a bullring, when the ground floor is boarded off and the balconies become the stands. Around it the village produces anise liqueur, distilled here since the eighteenth century, and garlic. The church of the Asuncion above the square holds a Goya painting of the Assumption, given by the painter's brother, who was its chaplain. A ruined castle stands on the edge of the village.

What you actually see

• The Plaza Mayor - a circular square of around 230 wooden balconies.
• The bullring conversion - the square boarded up for corridas several times a year.
• The Goya painting - an Assumption in the parish church above the square.
• The anise distilleries - liqueur produced in the village since the 1700s.

When to go

April to June and September to November; the square is used for Easter passion plays and for bullfights in summer and at the October fair. Weekends bring Madrid day-trippers and the restaurants fill.

Honest expectations

The square is ringed with restaurants charging tourist prices, and the village lives largely on Madrid weekend trade. Parking is difficult on Sundays. The bullfights divide opinion and are held in the square itself.

Nearby

Aranjuez lies southwest; Madrid is forty-five kilometres northwest.