Gran Vía

This guide to Gran Vía in Madrid traces the boulevard from its costly early-1900s construction, which flattened whole blocks and a duchess's palace, to the Spanish Civil War, when years of shelling earned it a grim nickname. You'll hear how Nationalist gunners across the river used the towering Telefónica building as their aim point, and how foreign correspondents, Ernest Hemingway among them, filed dispatches from inside its shaking floors. Look up at that same skyline as you walk the avenue today.