Huge Central Nave, Estación Del Arte, Line 1 Metro Madrid, Spain Editorial Image

The Atocha station, now named Estación del Arte, symbolises the Madrids eternal welcoming spirit. The iron heart of Madrid was the first train station to be built in the city in 1851. All of Spain’s railway lines were developed around the infrastructure, the destination of all the routes along which over 100 million passengers per year on average now travel. Its huge central nave, an excellent example of late-nineteenth-century iron architecture, has become an icon of the capital. On 11 March 2004, the station was the principle scene of a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda, four bombs placed on two trains exploded in Atocha, in which 193 people died at different points across Madrid.